Its that time of the year again, time to be on Wheels

So, still not much to report in the whole Ryan working 14 hours every weekday, other than it is getting old.  Fast.  I am super tired all the time, but I am still getting most of my workouts completed, but the house has gone to the kids.  Toys everywhere.  Laundry everywhere.  I read some Yahoo article that seriously grossed me out about how often I should change my sheets (weekly), and nearly puked.  However, I was still too tired to do anything about it for ONE MORE WEEK!  Ugh.  At least I did go and wash EVERYTHING, including the mattress cover, on the super hot super wash setting.  Bad thing is that I haven't done the kids yet.  We are trying to have Soren sleep in underwear tonight, so I am postponing washing the kids stuff until tomorrow.  We might REALLY have to wash the sheets at say, 5am, so I figured waiting on that a day wouldn't kill anyone, especially the dust mites (ewww!).  It was so easy to stay on the kids bedding when they were constantly spitting up and peeing the bed.  Now that they don't, I completely forget to change their sheets! 

Ok, onto what this is really about.  Biking cramming.  Biking is on my mind all the time.  I always feel like I should be biking right now.  I have actually cut back to 3 days of running so that I can do 2 days of biking.  Not sure how I feel about this.  I am trying to go for more quality, so hopefully it will work.  I probably should be doing 3 bike workouts, but getting in ANY has been a struggle.  I picked up my new Landshark kit, which was very exciting too!  The pink matched my bike.  Sorry I am posing with not one, but two lawnmowers here:

Here is how last week went down.  Ryan was working crazy hours and scheduled to be out of town.  I was supposed to bike with a friend 2x last week.  I got babysitters, which is not easy or free, for these two occasions, based on what worked.  I was going to do a new route on Thurs, as well as a long route on Sat afternoon.  Everything is all good.  My friend Alan, from MI, tells me that he will be in town and is riding at 9am on Sat.  OK, but Alan is super fast, and I would only see him at the beginning, and not even the end b/c he planned to do double what I wanted to ride.  I didn't make this a priority.  I pretty much can only eat with Alan.  Then, Wed, my friend calls me and says she can't do either ride.  I get more upset than I should be (meaning Ryan thinks I am being such a girl and stupid for being mad, but he didn't even realize this until Sunday, since he was so busy, and it was the last thing I wanted to whine to him about).  I knew that for Thursday, I could still ride by myself, so that was no big deal.  I'm pretty good about getting things done and not letting drama get in the way of a workout.  I might be really angry, but I won't let it ruin my workout. 

Saturday was another story.  I had no clue of where I needed to go to ride 50 miles.  I had gone through a couple babysitters to get the one for Saturday afternoon, and pulling it ahead didn't initially appear to work so I could ride "with" Alan.  Also, I am not the person who will do a ride with just one other guy and no other people. The fortunate thing is that he was doing a really big group ride, so there would be other people.  It was just so frustrating to have to move everything around.  Then Ryan tells me he wants a babysitter for Sat night so we can see the Avengers when he gets back.  Really?  I thought he was going to need to ride when he got back.  Everything was a mess. 

Thankfully, Ryan decided to NOT go out of town.  I didn't really realize it was optional, but he got out of it.  I moved our sitter from Saturday afternoon to Fri night so we could have a much needed date night.  I got a call from Erin asking about riding (I had left her a VM earlier in the week, but heard nothing, she is tapering for IMTX, so I knew she had a strict plan and wasn't sure if it would mesh with mine).  We couldn't work out a time Friday night because Ryan hadn't worked out his time, but I left her a message to do the 9am ride with Alan.  I watch the movie, which was awesome, and then get home and realize that rockstar Amy is going to be here too from MI!  Uh oh.  Last year, on my first long ride of the year, I met up with Amy and had my rear handed to me.  Seriously, though, Amy is great.   Now I REALLY want to do the ride at 9am.  Leave another message for Erin.  Go to sleep, and then wake up in time to make it to the 9am ride, but still have not heard back from Erin!  What is going on?  I get all ready, and leave with what SHOULD be plenty of time to make it to the ride.  I call Amy from the car to let her know I will be down there.  Alan pipes up that I71 is closed.  WHAT????  Ok, well, I have the navi in the car, and should be able to get there w/o the freeway.  I get down to where I needed to turn to get into the parking lot where the crew was meeting and BAM, the road was blocked off for a charity walk.  ACK!  I should have just asked the guy if I could drive to the parking lot, because at that point (which I didn't realize yet), the ONLY way to the lot was either by bike, or by someone letting me through a barricade.  Needless to say, I missed the ride.  Thankfully, in the frustration of trying to get downtown, I got a message from Erin, who overslept, and needed me to wait for her.  Yea!  It took a little while to meet up and drive to a traffic free location, but we finally made it.  It only took an hour longer than expected to get started.  Oops.  I didn't call Ryan for fear that he wouldn't want me to do my whole route, but I knew what time he was planning on riding, so I figured I would be OK.  Erin took me on an awesome ride through southern Indiana.  It was fabulous.  It was fairly flat, with one big hill.  We did our 50 miles with no real incident, aside from us each losing an item from our bikes over different RR crossings, but nothing big.  We even averaged over 17mph, which was wonderful for me.  Last year, I was averaging 18 consistently, but here, on the terrain, hadn't been able to do that.  It was great to ride and not suffer!  Also, after missing Amy and Alan on the bikes, I did meet up with them for dinner.  That's pretty much the only way I can hang with them!  Eating.  Go me.

Erin and I stopped for a photo op at the Falls of the Ohio.  We were about 30 miles in when we found her boyfriend, who was finishing up leading a practice ride for Bike to Beat Cancer.  He took this for us:

Also, in other news, I took Keira to her first ever roller skating party!  I am happy to say that we all lived, nothing was broken, and the kids didn't take me out.  Honestly, I was a little scared that I would suffer a season ending injury at the rollerdome.  Thankfully, we are all OK.  My wrists hurt from holding up the kids, but otherwise, we are fine.

Up for this weekend, more cycling.  I switched around the days I am going workouts to accomodate more biking and the fact that by dropping one day of running, I ended up running 3 days in a row, with 4 days off.  That doesn't seem right.  So, I am going to try running MWF, swimming TWTh (for this week, due to Keira's year end, but I plan to try TWF next week), and biking Th and Sat, with Sunday a rest day.  I am planning to do core 2x, but haven't figured out which days to do it.  I did it on Monday already, and just need to do it probably on Friday?  I don't know.  Keira has a school party on Friday, and Field Day on Thurs.  I was going to go to both, but I guess they don't want all the parents there on Field day.  I am totally sending her to school on Thurs in her Ironman shirt.  I wonder what Big Daddy Diesel will think of that.  Gun to a knife fight perhaps?  It will probably shock her gym teacher, since usually she wears dresses every day, and NEVER wears souvenir type tees to school.  I am bribing her with a new dress to do it.  She might wear it with a skort, though!  At any rate, it will be my turn to take the afternoon ride schedule.  I have a class to take in the morning, followed by a birthday party for Keira to attend.  Ryan will have all morning to get his ride in, and I will have the kids.  I am bringing them to my class.  That will be awesome, but it is crunch time for us, we have two HUGE rides coming up.  Ryan has the century of the Horsey Hundred in less than 2 weeks, and then 2 weeks from that, he has the Michigan Mountain Mayhem which is 200K with 10,000ft of climbing.  Ugh.  I am going along on both rides, but am doing the 75 miles and the 100K, respectively.  I WILL kill it on the bike at Muncie!

Thanks for reading this super long post with lots of ramblings!