Awake for Ride

It's 5:36AM. I've got the gear packed up. Eating a quick breakfast. Took my morning vitamins. I'm heading out on my second ever 100+ mile ride. I'd like to do 112 miles again.

Oroginally didn't plan on making this post. After the swim last night my body is a little tired. Didn't sleep incredibly well last night.

But I draw a lot of mental strength on rides knowing that you, the excellent readers of joereger.com, are out there checking up on me. So I decided to make the post and declare my intentions. That way it's a lot harder to wuss out and shorten the ride. The toughest moment on the ride will be right around 56 miles when I've already turned around and put about 16 miles towards the car. I'll then have to head back out to the end of the trail. Once I make that turn I'll know that the rest is in the bag.

I'm slightly less motivated today than I was last weekend. Last weekend was the first ride at that distance. This weekend is a lot less dramatic. So I need all the mental toughness I can muster.

I've got a book on tape on the iPod... Dan Browne's Digital Fortress... a thriller about techno-babble internet crypto stuff. May listen to it... or my workout mix.

My TiVo is broken again. It'll capture today's Tour de France stage but after that it doesn't have any more program data. The modem got fried by lightning. Second time this has happened. Can pay another $100 and wait three weeks to have it repaired. Or can buy a new one. Annoying timing with the Tour. May find myself buying one this afternoon and shipping one off tomorrow. Can't miss the Tour. And can't dedicate three hours of every morning to the Tour... I can try but I'll miss some. I suppose they're replaying them a good bit on OLN. But in reality I can't live without TiVo overall.

Carmichael, Lance's coach, said that on training rides he makes sure that his athletes output the same number of watts as they would in competition. But ha makes them extend that wattage over more time. Basically, they do the same distance but more slowly. I think that I may do the same today. I don't expect to break last week's time of right around six hours.

And I've got some thunderstorms coming into the area. Looks like wind may be in my face for half the ride. At least the temp won't be as high as it was last week.

Ok, working on the bagels I'm having for breakfast. Gotta run. Wish me luck and perserverence.