How Matt and Ryan train over the winter:

(....not quite, most days at least...)

Actually, it looks more like this:

...and heres a shot with the optional Matt attachment:

It shouldn't be any surprise to hear that we're beginning to kick our training into high gear (bike pun intended). With collegiate road racing pretty much finished by May, it's necessary to start racing near the end of February. Though the calendar of this year's events hasn't been posted yet, no one expects much of a departure from years past. Last year, races started on the weekend of Feb 27/28 at Murray State in Kentucky and we finished our conference the weekend of April 24/23 at Purdue in Indiana.

Right now, it's important to be phasing slowly out of the really gradual endurance rides of late fall and into rides that stress the legs and heart a bit more. That's not to say we're going to get a break from long and tedious hours on the bike. We're scheduled to ride about 8.5 hours this week, which means Netflix meets to come up with 8.5 hours of entertainment for us (I went through 8 20-minute episodes Saturday night, which is just over a third of most seasons). Points to whomever can name the movie we watched tonight.