Ragweed, Commuting, & Next year

The ragweed index is at an all time high.  Unfortunately I don’t need a graph to show me this.  I have my own personal indicator attached to my face; my nose.  The higher the count the more snot comes out of it.  This week I’m setting records.

My allergies have been so bad it feels like I have a collapsed lung.  This with the heat and the farmers cutting hay it makes riding very undesirable.  So this week I’ve ran some and got a short ride in on my road bike.  The rest of this weeks training has consisted of commuting.

Last year the bulk of my training consisted of biking to work and back.  I went a span of over 6 months riding everyday to work last year.  With my training/racing load this year I’ve been a little lax in my commuting.   But with all time high gas prices I’ve got out the commuting gear.

It was good to see several fellow OCC’ers riding to the club meeting on Tuesday; no the Zebra doesn’t count Super G.  It inspired me to use the bike to accomplish more of my errands.  I should rack up some quick miles this way since I live 6 miles from town.  If more people would do this we could start making some in roads to our super high demand on fuel.  This winter is looking expensive with natural gas prices predicted to raise home heating bills by as much as 71%!  I’ve been flooded with emails this week telling me what gas stations to buy from since certain ones import & certain ones don’t.  What days to not drive, etc, etc.  I’m thinking a little saddle time would be easier than reading those long winded emails (although some do have some interesting points).

With cross season coming and 2 more adventure races left this year running is starting to become a bigger part of my training.  I once said once I graduated college I’d never run another lap on the track.  I’ve made it 10+ years without doing it (yes I graduated WSC  in the fall of 1994 you youngsters!).  Now it looks I have seen the method to VanAsten’s madness and I’m going to join him for weekly attempts to not puke sessions on the track.

And now a teaser for future blogs:  This week several things have popped up that might make next season extremely interesting for me.  Can’t say yet but if they pan out it will be cool.  Stay tuned.