Playing catch up

Need to catch up on everything... updates here, work, sleep, training, etc. Let's see... weekend recap first:

Saturday, kid's stuff, yard work, got to play 9 holes of golf (earliest I have ever been on a course), then not much Sat night.

Sunday, found out that sometimes it pays to procrastinate... I had planned to be out on the roads at 6:30 for an attack/interval workout to beat the weather and not conflict with my wife's plans. Lounged around in bed and by the time I got ready it was around 7. Literally just as I'm about to put my shoes on I see the wet dots forming on the front walk. I was already dressed so I stripped off the warm stuff and set up in the garage. Turned up some loud angry music way too loud and off I went. Great workout... probably the best I've felt in a while. Later in the day tried to change the oil on the m'cycle before I get it sold and found out that the drain plug is impossible to get to without a lift. I don't have one so I need to borrow one or bring it to a shop. We'll see, but that bike should be gone soon which will provide cash for the cross bike.

Yesterday I pulled on the full rain gear and went out to cheer on the crazies at the marathon. It is amazingly hard to pick your friends out of a moving crowd that big and of the 20 or so people I knew running, I somehow missed every one of them. Weather ended up being less of a factor than expected, but still a factor so huge props to everyone who finished. Some people I know even got PR's so it couldn't have been all bad.

Next 2 days I'm in class at work so it's a little bit of a mental blowoff. I'll make sure that things aren't imploding during breaks, but that's about it. Unless we get shut out by the crowds tonight, my wife and I are going to catch the advanced showing of The Flying Scotsman which is coming out in May. Should be fun.

So a little tangent here because I was thinking about it over the weekend... I'm curious to find out if I'm just simply not cut out for this cycling thing or if maybe, the elitist nature of the sport extends into how many hours you spent training. There does seem to be an air of "I trained more hours than you and my bike is shinier" about this sport which is obviously not completely connected to race results. I got on this because I was feeling pretty good about my 8.5 hours or so of saddle time last week and then I was clicking around through a maze of linked blogs and I find a guy (i think he's a 3) who was talking about a relatively easy week of 18.5 training hours. One thing I know for certain is that unless I start commuting the 57 round trip every day, I will probably never approach 20 hours of saddle time in a week. Part of me thinks back to my hard core running days when I was reasonably successful on 40-50 miles a week of training. I knew other guys who really were no more successful on 80 miles a week or more. Christ, I think my longest every marathon training week was under 70 and that was the year I ran 2:53 in terrible weather. So I wonder in the back of my head if I can pull this cycling thing off on being the focused-training-with-low-mileage-guy or if I'm going to get schooled. We shall see. I'm still REALLY looking forward to some mountain bike races this season (never did one before) because mentally the race will be easier for me. Pretty much the same as running... go faster than everyone else. I think it will forever drive me nuts that in road races, the fastest guy in a field has little guarantee that he will win.