Managed to find the only dry hour in the whole day to get in a few miles. Despite being sick I was able to maintain Doug's ~ 8min/mile pace. Tomorrow more distance less speed.

Stopped at the (last) monday night crit series on the way home - pretty cool. Interested to see what tomorrows 4/5 race looks like.

Light run w/the kids biking. The run ended up being a series of small runs with minor breaks to show the youngest the rules of the road. Ended with a nice sprint trying to catch him :)

Sara's first ride on her new bike!! Yeah - the same one she crashed a few months back. It's all better now and so is she but even still she stayed in the saddle this time on an easy out and back on the Fern Ridge path (had to revisit the scene of the crime). She admitted to being out of shape so I'm thinking something more slower and more aerobically challenging for the next ride - McBeth maybe, or Gimple hill. Wonder how long it will be until she is beating me up those hills? Not long I think, especially if I dont shed some weight. You don't see many 200lb mountain goats in the Tour and there's a reason why - they're all in their teams cars dreaming of next years Tour of Holland.

The temps topped out at nearly 90 and with little shade this ride just kicked my ass. Thanks to my new 13-26 cassette climbing was actually the least of my problems - even on the back side my legs felt strong. My stamina however was just sapped by the relentless heat and the fact that while Keith, Galen & Chris all got to stop for lunch & water in Sisters I rode 55 continuous miles with only 3 bottles of water and some gu.

Why? - you ask - did I not join them for lunch? Well to give them a head start of course - a 2 hour head start...and because I'm the idiot who realized he left his shoes at home AFTER we'd made the 1 hour drive up. Still this is a great ride when the road is closed to motorized traffic and with the exception of some minor scree there was little reason not to imagine yourself getting ready for this Saturdays start of the Tour.