fitness update and cookies

Yesterday we baked cookies. I made the recipe that's on the back of the bag of chocolate chips (toll house). Laurie made vegan cookies. Luckily I froze 1/2 the batch, hoping to save some for a later date. So now there are approximately zero thawed toll house cookies left (ate em), and I'm real close to digging into the rest that are in the freezer; only thing holding me back is my 'belly ache' from eating all the cookies. There's still quite a few vegan ones left though. I have pretty much zero self control when there are cookies in the cookie jar. dang.

So the fitness is coming together. I was able to keep up on the Tuesday night 'hammerfest' ride from sunny side sports. Chris Sheppard was in the house, and Megan Elliot (GF of euro pro Chris Horner). This year, the Tuesday ride has become the CSLB ride (Chase Steve Larsen's Brother). Mike Larsen moved to town a few weeks ago, and he can ride. Anyway, after getting my ass dropped many times this spring on this ride it was sweet to be in the front group until the end, especially since the group that started out this week's ride was huge. Yeeaa! I'm also running a fair amount. The bend olympics is coming up, but I have not XC skied since late March, and I haven't alpined or kayaked since last years ppp. In fact (this is sad) I've taken 4 chairlift rides since moving to Bend in May 2004, All of them having to do with doing the PPP twice. 1 ride for warm up, 1 ride up for the race. I am going to TRY to get up to the mountain once before the PPP but if I don't, oh well, the race will start for me if I can make it to dry land after the nordic leg, then watch out, cause I'll be chasing!

After the bend olympics, I'm doing the Mt Hood stage race. It will be my first Cat 3 endeavor that was not during weekly phlebotomies. I raced in and finished the Cat 3 cascade classic stage race last year, and it was pretty bad, but I finished and not DFL and not even bottom podium (but close). I raced good in the Cat 4s at hood last year, (I even won some money for being top 10!) and am looking forward to racing at hood again, but this year in the 3s. This year the format for the 3s is 4 stages in 4 days starting on May 31st. I'm a bit concerned that I haven't done any road races yet this spring, but Hood consists of 2 climbing stages (Thursday's 66 mile circut race and Saturday's epic 87 mile road race), an 18.5 mile TT on Friday and a 30 minute criterium to wrap it up. I hope to have the fitness to hang on on the climbing days, and the TT is solo, and the crit is only 30 minutes. Back in my triathlon days, the TT would have been a cinch, but the lack of a TT series in Bend this year, and my unexpected withdrawal from the DRVTT fest, I have not had much practice. Oh well, that's why I have a disc wheel :P

I'm thinking I'm going to sport THESE at Mt Hood this year... (whadya think?)
that's all, Thanks for reading.