One of the reasons I started this blog was to throw a larger net to help with fundraising for the Chain Gang's RAAM effort and to give a window into my training and fundraising efforts. But... I haven't been doing a great job of keeping the blog up to date. It's a bit of a cop out, but it seems that life always gets in the way. Another part is that I've got this idealistic dream of trying to write really good stuff. Kind of makes me procrastinate a bit when it comes to getting stuff pushed up to the cloud. I should probably just accept that people probably don't really care if the content is clever or not, just get info out.
So.. I'm happy to say that as I type this the fundraising number is almost $54,000! Pretty exciting stuff. If you or some of your like minded friends are available on Mar 24th, sign up for the Race To Anyplace. $450 will get your team a bike for the 6 hours, $400 if you're up to doing it solo. All the riders in the Chain Gang will be doing it solo, come out and watch us suffer!
Training is going well. I continue to surprise myself in the improvements (sometimes not huge, but improvements none the less) that continue month to month and year to year. Coach Tony has done a good job of laying out a very robust training plan for us. The training is different from what I'm used to doing. An 8 person team has a different dynamic than the types of riding and training that I've historically done in the past. Over the last year or two I've been aspiring to longer and longer rides, RAAM is going to require three, one hour efforts every 24 hours. Easy right? Yeah, except that each of these hour efforts need to be pretty much max effort. After each one you get three hours off, so you can afford to empty the tank or come close. A bit different from what I'm used to but I am getting my head wrapped around it.
Had a chance to get in a good hard ride last Saturday with about half the Chain Gang. I feel good about my performance but also realize that I need to continue to work and improve.
No promises, but I'll try to get better about keeping the info moving.
