Miami

I haven't really wanted to blog much about my poor winter of training. How many entries of "not feeling good" can a reader take? Also I didn't want to let the competition know my fitness is not up to par!! :) After my results at Hillsboro, the cat is out of the bag:( Not really sure what the cause was but this winter I seemed to catch every little sickness that was going around and I spent all of February and even much of March not training. It was very frustrating. However other than a nagging back issue I'm feeling great and now have had 3 solid weeks of good training. +========================================================= For spring break Jason and I took the kids out to Pennsylvania to my parents house and even though it wasn't the greatest weather, (40 and overcast) I was able to accomplish some great training in the mountains. ==========================================================Then because my husband Jason kicks ass at work, they rewarded him and 149 other employees with a trip to Miami Beach to stay at a fancy resort. He got to bring me as a guest! This is a big deal for us as normally "vacation" in our house involves some kind of bike racing or a trip to grandma's house. My wonderful parents (the reason I'm able to do any mid-week bike racing involving travel) took care of our kids while Jason and I were able to jet off to Miami. ===============================++++++++++++++++++++======= Originally I had planned to take the time off the bike and just enjoy a vacation. But things changed given where I'm at in my training and I really wanted to continue to build on my fitness. Since they flew us United, it was going to be super expensive to fly my bike, so I decided to try renting one. I was a little nervous how that would work out, never having done that before. It went great!! Thanks to a great tip from Elena I brought my power tap on the plane for no charge and was able to rent a nice road bike from a local shop. I got in three glorious days of riding on Key Biscayne and while I had a very nice aluminum bike, it was much heavier than my carbon fiber Trek Madone. It's nice to ride something a little less nice every once in a while just to make you appreciate how great you really have it! It was beautiful, sunny and warm every day and I even ran into a fellow bike racer I had met at superweek last year!! =+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The last two days I was there I had to return the bike so I did a private yoga class out on the lawn and just hung out and "luxuriated".

Getting into the hang of Miami Beach resort life!

Now I'm back home and back to reality, but the break was great and I'm looking forward to racing at Leland this weekend, and doing the clinic with Greg Meeker on Sunday.