Yes, it's been a while...

I've been seriously neglecting this blog for a while, but I'm back now. Things have been pretty busy lately between work and training (hard to believe it's the "off-season"). My weekends have been made up of riding, while maintaining a low heart rate (which is soooo hard to do when riding with teammates) and going out on the weekend nights.

Speaking of which, I just came off of a great weekend of riding, which has prompted a new blog post.

On Saturday, about 20 of us from Active Athlete / Squadra Ovest met at the bridge at 9am for a team ride. We went up to Nicasio, which is where the group broke up into two groups...one group 180'd and headed back to SF the same way, while a group of 5 (Eric, Murat, Gabe, Jerome and I) headed west to Point Reyes Station and then home via Highway 1, Bo-Fax Road, Ridgecrest (7-Sisters) . This ended up being a killer 5hr ride of 80 miles.
Sunday was a bit different. I've never taken Skyline south, but today we had some teammates racing the Bay Area Super Prestige Cyclocross Championship race at Coyote Point. This ride was just Eric and I (Eric from Get A Grip in Chicago). We got a bit "lost" on the way, but made it just in time to see the start of the Men's B race. AA/SO had 3 new teammates racing in this race...Anthony (currently with Altezza 40), Matthew and Aaron (currently with Team Spine). Anthony was leading the series and rode away from the rest to claim the top podium spot for the day, and of course the series - Congrats! Aaron and Matthew both had great races as well and I'm looking forward to racing with these guys when the season rolls around.

After the race, Eric and I rode back along the bay...curving around SFO and then up/down/up... around Potrero Hill, through the Mission and then up Powell St to home. Ride time was 4 hours and 60 miles.

Eric didn't fly out until today, so I burned one of my last vacation days and headed out for another big day on the bike. We decided to throw in some big slow climbing and went up to the Mt. Tam parking lot, across the 7-sisters, across Alpine Dam to Fairfax and then we added on Paradise Loop to get in some more time. Ride time 5hrs, 73 miles.

I love that. My legs feel amazing today. 2008 is going to be fun.