Only a few days on program and my abs are talking to me about it

Firmly. This is a good thing, I guess. If they weren't, I'd only be given more to do. Here and a 30 second plank is quite enough, thank you very much.

But first was the bike ride. The plan called for a flat ride today, and that means 22X east of Calgary. It's not quite as flat as Saskatoon, or worse, Regina, because there's an overpass over a railroad track, but still, this is the flattest ride I've ever done. I parked in the access to Mahogany. That's the name of a new neighbourhood in Calgary. From there I rode east, nice and easy, with my heart rate just a bit below the 125 bpm sweet spot.

First goal was heart rate, and the second was to keep the cadence up. Oddly enough, my heart rate tended to be a bit on the low side, yet my legs didn't want to go faster or harder, and I was breathing harder than I thought I would be. Strange. It started as a nice ride, with not much wind till near the turn around point, when a gusty crosswind started up, and a few raindrops hit me. I'm a wimp, I turned around about 10 minutes early, suspecting the ride back was going to be tougher than the ride out.

So it was. The ride back took 1:10, for a 2 hour ride even, and 51 K, for 25.5 Kph average speed. Average heart rate was 119, average cadence was 83 rpm. The ride back was a bit of a suffer fest. The wind was totally across, very gusty, and it was getting cold. At least it wasn't raining. My legs were getting surprisingly tired toward the end. All that core work, I guess.

It turns out I didn't park far enough east. The shoulder is ok, except for lots of rocks, real actual rocks I didn't want to run over. There are a lot of trucks on the road. And the smells were horrible! Diesel fumes, swampy gassy smell, animal manure were the bad ones, with fresh cut hay being the good one. A bit further east and the trucks and rocks go away. Next time.

Then, a bit later in the afternoon, another core session. One hour. More plank, arm dips, crunch stuff, leg stuff. This had better be good for me.

On the way back from the ride I picked up some of the last Taber corn of the season. BBQ'd that along with some steak for supper.

Class all day Fri and Sat, probably won't blog till Sunday. ttfn