2009 season recap

Here is a picture that shows my cumulative hours on the bike in 2007, 2008 and 2009. As you can see, the early part of 2009 is where I dropped the ball. For several weeks, starting in February of 09, I biked considerably less than during the previous two years.

Not surprisingly, this deficit resulted in a less than spectacular bike split -and equally appalling run- at IMLP '09.

The culprit really was the fact that I did not have a road bike to train with. After my Merckx frame broke, I was without road wheels for nearly nine months. So, why did I not ride more on my triathlon frame? The answer to that is quite simple. Every weekend I took my son Alistair to road races. During 2008, I would race Cat 4 while he raced in his division. That would give me a free hard 2 hour workout on Saturday and Sunday.

In 2009, I did not have a road frame but I still drove to the races on weekends. However, one cannot race with a triathlon bike (with aero cockpit) and so I sat around the entire time. The good thing was that it gave me a chance to watch Alistair and thereby help him with his riding, tactics, and the like. The bad thing was that I usually ended up doing very little on weekends. By the time we came home, it was often too late to go on a long ride.