Riding with a vengeance

Wow where did that come from? I think I pissed someone off. It was a gorgeous start to the day but the forecast was calling for the usual 5:00pm thunderstorm. I emailed Justin and his reply was that if there was a threat of rain he'd rather not make the drive up and potentially not ride and he'd get on the trainer instead. Well the trainer is ok for winter training but we have to take advantage of the remaining nice days we have. That and unless you're really, really dedicated the tendency is to not go as hard as when on the road. So I followed the weather forecast and went online to track any potential storms and I figured that while there was a chance of rain that we should get out anyways. I called Justin and told him I was calling him as his coach, not his friend, and that I wanted him to get his butt up here after work to go riding. If it rained we'd stop, we'd get wet and when it stopped we'd keep going. I think that must have pissed him off just a bit but he did come up for our ride. Chris opted to head to the pool instead tonight so it would be just Justin and me on the road. So we started out and we got lucky as the storm clouds had moved off to the east and blue skies opened up above us. With road construction going on along 16th Ave we wound our way through Cornell and made our way towards 10th Line. We rode easy for this first part but once we hit York Durham Justin took the lead and whoa ..... he started hammering. He rode with a vengeance and personally I think he was trying to hurt me but hey if that's what it takes to get him motivated and to get his performance up where I know it can be then I'll take the bullet. What was even more surprising though was that he was doing this through a pretty stiff wind. Going north it was more of a crosswind but with those HED 3's on his bike that's the worse kind of wind for him to have to deal with. And once we hit Bloomington we turned right into the wind and he continued to push a 30 km/hr average speed. The route home was somewhat easier by being downhill and then once we turned east also aided by a tailwind but he didn't let up until we got nearer to the house. Once we got done we switched into our running gear and headed out for a 6-7 km run. It wasn't long before Justin indicated that his energy level was down and he was concerned he may not be able to complete the full run. This is something we need to dial in before Miami because it could end up being a race killer for him. He ended up finishing a full 7.5 km but the run was a polar opposite from his bike and right now we have to work on both nutrition and probably pacing his bike leg to ensure he has enough energy left for his run.