The best day yet

After a long Monday ride I was expecting to really just wash out of Tuesday's ride and phone it in but I was wrong!

Starting out 5 miles into the route is kind of sweet. After Monday I was willing to give up those miles despite actually already doing them ahead of time. We kicked off with some great bunch of Iowa's rolling hills. After a breakfast stop I launched up a hill and kept flying along for the next 15 minutes thinking I was the tour de France champ only to be brought crashing down to reality when I was told we had a tail wind all morning. Oh well, I still felt great. We ended up with about 55 miles today and they felt great. I even had some gas in the tank when we rolled in. It was a great day.

Ames is our overnight town tonight and I have been looking forward to this and for many reasons. First, despite zero allegiance to Iowa State I was really geeked up to ride my bike around the inside of the football stadium and it was really cool. Second, uncle jerry and aunt jo would be in town at their daughter Pam's house. I got a short visit in and got to see Pam's kids for the second time in a year so that was great. Third was our host. The Englemens would be our host for the second time and they seemed as excited as were we that we were staying and they have an incredible family and a beautiful house so the might has been a dream and it's still early. I would like to personally thank them for being part of team cuisine again. We'll see you in 10 more years!!!

Dinner was pasta night. We started with a local cabbage shredded with heirloom grape tomatoes then had a cauliflower risotto followed by 4 types of pasta. Honestly I was a little overwhelmed and lost track but there was spaghetti and a real wide pasta that looked like a lasagna noodle mixed with all sorts of veggies. We finished up the meal with a homemade sorbet made with 4 types of melons, grapes, basil and a few other things. That was really good but I feel like I am repeating myself when I tell you how good the dinner was because <enter yesterday's description here>.

Back at it tomorrow and I'm excited that I will eclipse my official training miles for the whole year for this week. I guess training is over!