Sunday, December 09, 2001 Went for a great ride today. The weather was perfect - 55-60 degrees, sunny, not too windy. I got a new PR today for a section of a route I ride a lot - 20mph. My previous PR for this section is 19.7. Although the wind was fairly light, I did ride into a headwind on what is usually the fastest flat section of the ride. I still cruised at around 21-22mph during that section. Due to my short commute, I'm not getting nearly as many miles in (but am still doing better than last year), but my miles are very high-intensity. I think this is keeping my average speeds decent. Plus, I've been commuting lately on my Cannondale cyclocross bike, which has knobbies mounted. It's a lot more effort. It's kind of like any training technique that artificially increases resistance and effort. I think it will keep my strength up quite effectively. muttered around 8:22 PM

Sunday, December 02, 2001 My riding bud, Brian, and I went for our traditional 40-miler around South Denver today. We missed the past two Sundays, so we were overdue for this ride. It started out looking as though it would be pretty cold, but within 5 miles, I'd dumped my vest, and was just riding in my long-sleeve jersey. Though the temperature was nice, we ran into a lot of snowpack and ice on the Cherry Creek trail -- some of it tens of yards in length. All went fine until the very last patch, where ironicall, Brian dumped it. It looked as if he went down pretty hard (I didn't see it, but he bent one of his brake hoods in pretty far), but he wasn't hurt too badly (as far as we know). Even though neither of us have been riding as much lately as we did this summer, we still turned in a pretty darn good average for the ride: 18.4mph. I set a new PR average in getting to our rendezvous point (about 11 miles), since I was running late: 21.3mph. muttered around 8:35 PM