Jon's Jibber-jabber

This past week was a race prep week for me.  I am prepping for the Ft. Ritchie Triathlon next weekend.  I should have had this post out on Sunday but I saved it as a draft and forgot to post it.  I found myself modifying my training plan a bit this week to prepare for the upcoming race.  My plan has the goal of the half-Iron in October so this upcoming race isn't built in.  Nevertheless, it was easy to modify a few of the workouts for more race specific training.  For instance, I added in more hill training to get used to climbing and shortened some of the distances since the Olympic distance doesn't require 50+ miles on the bike.  Saturday I did an open water swim with Racine Multisport.  Racine uses Lake Royer (where Ft. Ritchie is held) and they do several open water swims throughout the year.  There is no coaching or organized swim workout.  Basically, you pay around $8 and get a swim cap that allows you to swim in the lake.  Normally, the lake is off limits to swimmers.

I started a new training phase in July, incororating hills into my workouts.  Both Ft.Ritchie and Half Full are both described as "hilly" by locals. Now this being Maryland, hilly is a relative term.   I grew up in the Poconos of PA, where there aren't the mountains of Mont Vantoux or Alpes d'Huez but more than the 50 ft climbs that count as hills in MD. Ft. Ritchie (now two weeks away) does have climbs that are categorized.  I looked up the route and it had been tracked on mapmyride.com. This site categorizes climbs from GPS uploads based on similar criteria that is used for cycling events.  Ft. Ritchie has a short 3/4 mile category 5 climb and a longer 3.75 mile category 3 climb.  Knowing this, I felt it was time to try to get in as much work as possible on the hills around here. In doing that, I am trying to put together some courses that repeat some of the steeper or longer climbs in the Annapolis area.  This is pretty hard as our climbs aren't as long or

Last week, I purchased a new trunk mount bike rack.  I have an older Bell bike rack that I think I picked up at Walmart but it isn't stable for long trips or multiple bikes.  I'd been looking around for a new rack but prices are pretty steep for most good bike racks.  Neither of my cars have a hitch nor do they have cross bars.  The setup for putting a roof-mounted rack on one of the cars would come in close to $400 with all of the equipment and then the racks.  So multiply that by two for both vehicles and it is very out of my range.  A trunk mount could be passed back and forth between vehicles if I found the right one. Before I start, let me tell you that the bike rack I got last week was free.  In fact, I actually gained money on it.  Here's how it happened.  About a month ago, my wife and I opened an REI visa since we shop there frequently and could get pretty much extra dividend money with the card's cash back on REI purchases.  With our first purchase on the ca