Summer happenings

OK, I see how this blog thing is working. Number of posts are inversely proportional to how nice it is outside and how long daylight is. Only exception is if I have good results in races...

Racing at Grandview last weekend was great. My results were not good, but Stark Velo did very well in the Cat 3/4 race with the win, 3rd and 2 other money spots. Greg Flecher dropped his break companion in the 2-up sprint. Way to go Greg. Brent Martin also dropped his group in a sprint to take 3rd. The course is by far one of my favorite due to the technical cornering and also due to the city and residents of Grandview Heights. If you have not been to this race, make a point of going next year. Also make sure to stop at the house near the bottom of the hill that puts out a full lunch buffet with brats, hot dogs, hamburgers, salads, chips/pretzels, etc...oh yea, and a keg! All free...make sure you put a good tip in the jar though.

It was also great because my brother who live in C-bus stopped over. We watched a bit of the womens' pro 1/2 race, grabbed a beer at the house mentioned above, went to the Grandview Cafe for a great lunch and watch the Brazil/USA soccer match, then went back to the course to watch the mens P1/2. After that he stuck around to watch our cat 3/4 race.

We are now training hard for the upcoming Tour of the Valley and should be fielding a strong Cat 3 team. Can't wait...hope the weather is COOL... I really seem to shut down when overheating.

My backyard playground / workout gym has been coming along well. So far I've installed the kids swings, deck for the playhouse, 2 very solid pull up bars, and one 12' high bar for use with gymnastic rings. I snagged two large solid cut tree sections from my parents house to make a 20" and 24" box jump station. The monkey bars for the kids are built and ready to go, climbing wall holds arrived in the mail this week, I scored a free 15' rope for the rope climb, and have the wood ready to go for the climbing wall. Still need to order a set of rings, and would love to get a Dynamax 20lb ball and a good set of bumper plates. I'm saving pics for when this structure is done...

We've done a few lunch workouts on the new gym and I have gotten rave reviews for my workout partners. My first workout was Fran and hit a personal record of 7 min 30 sec (down from 9:36 in Feb). Yesterday, we did Eva, which is a brutal workout:

5 rounds for time of:
800m run
30 kettlebell swings (70 lbs)
30 pull ups

Since we do it at lunch, it was a struggle to complete. I did 4 rounds in 40 min. Another coworker did the full 5 rounds in 47 min.

More posts to come...especially with pics of the gym and results from TOTV (hopefully!)
Ciao