STATUS REPORT, April 1, 2006

The month of March has flown right by. And the pace of my training is flying with it. When March began, I had just passed the 100 cumulative mile marker for total training miles. With March behind me, I have more than 360 total miles in the saddle, averaging better than 60 miles a week during the past month. When March began, my average speed was hovering between 10.5 and 11.5 mph. I am now consistently riding at about 12.8 mph and have broken the 13 mph mark on three separate occasions, two of which were rides of more than 30 miles. Thursday afternoon, I rode up Lake Avenue from Falls Road without having to stop and with just the slightest amount of Hill Panic setting in. For those of you who do not know that hill, it's a 75 degree incline -- straight up, actually, I kid you not. Anyway, I finished it and was breathing when I got to the top. I am beginning to feel like I might be able to do this after all.

Tomorrow, the team has a 40-mile ride planned. We will be learning about pace lines which means riding really, really close to the rider immediately in front of you so that's the person who is battling the wind. I have learned that the wind is not my friend, unless it is behind me. Hills are not my friends, either, unless I am going down them. But there will be both wind in my face and hills that go up at Tahoe (with my luck, most of the 100 miles will be uphill in a headwind) so I must learn to get along with them both. Pace lines, I'm told, will help me do that by increasing my efficiency up to 20%. I'll let you know.

With the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, the training schedule picks up. Instead of riding three days a week, I will be riding five days a week. Mileage increases every week. I'll be riding 70, 80, 90 then 100 miles per week during April. So, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, you should know that there will be 31 riders from Maryland riding at Tahoe with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. As a team, we have raised over $70,000 for LLS, so far. To everyone who has contributed, thank you, again. To the rest of you -- send money.