Life Is A Full Time Job

Well, it's been a few days since my last post so I'll update on what's been going on around the Carlson household. Sunday was a busy day as the family headed down to Burlington for Mother's Day, but my plan of riding from Burlington to Alpine Valley and Johnson Rd. didn't quite turn out as planned. My wife had to go to her grandmother's in the afternoon so we had to high-tail it out of Burlington earlier than I was hoping to be back in New Berlin for an early dinner. Unfortunately it just obviously didn't work to stay out there for a nice 4 hour ride so I ended up coming home and then riding for 2.5 hours in the evening. Not quite what I intended as I really wanted to get in the hillwork for the upcoming Leland race and the State RR. It was Mother's Day though and obviously that's pretty important so I had to make a sacrifice. I'm learning that's it's quite different being a 30-something husband and father than when I was a young 20-something racer and could just do what I wanted, there's definitely a lot more to life now. Working full-time, having a family, owning a house is a lot of work, the things we get to do for our own sanity, like cycling, sometimes get pushed to the side. So far we are making it work, although I would always love to be able to ride more than I do now, but what can I do, priorities first. So anyways, I did ride Sunday, and normally Monday is a rest day for me but it was nice and hot out and I didn't ride as long as I wanted Sunday so I rode yesterday as well and I'm glad I did because my muscles felt really tight, especially my back and hamstrings and it felt good to stretch them out ahead of the harder workouts today and tomorrow. Today will be iffy for an outside ride as it's raining and I'm not sure if it's going to let up or not by the time I get home, the forecast says definitely not, but the weathermen have been wrong before. If it's only drizzling or it's done raining, then I'll obviously ride outside, otherwise it will be about 2 hours on the trainer, about 75 minutes of Tempo work. Tomorrow I'll be doing hill repeats on the longest hills I can find by my house and I do have a few picked out so I'll be doing that until the sun sets to get ready for the agony of Saturday's race. Thursday will be a moderate paced ride and Friday will be a short pre-race ride with a couple of power intervals to open up the legs. Saturday I'll be going up to Denzler for the road race, which is 3 loops of an 11 mile course and it has a one mile long 700ft. climb so I'll see if I can get my 180lb butt up that hill 3 times in the lead group, let's hope so. Sunday is one of my favorite races of the year, Wheels on Willy St., and that is one of my "A" races this year, anything less than top 3 would be a disappointment. The unfortunate part of this weekend is that I have to drive both days as my plans of staying overnight in Madison were nixed because I forgot my wife will be gone Saturday morning until Sunday morning for her sister's bachelorette party celebration. That leaves me with the kid and the dog and the kid has a Boy Scout trip on Saturday evening so I have to be home for that and to take care of the dog overnight. I tried to figure out a way to make it all work but finding someone to watch the dog is hard to do and our son is 13 which isn't quite old enough to leave home alone overnight. Basically it's just a few extra hours of driving and a couple tanks of gas, but hopefully I will win some cash to off set some of that expense. Anyways, I'm looking forward to a good week of training and we'll see how it all pays off this weekend. Hopefully all this work I've been doing all Spring will actually get me some results. Until next time.....


Here is a profile of Saturday's road race