"Epic" is a word that gets tossed around much too often in cycling circles. That ride you did yesterday, or that cheeseburger you ate after. There are few truly epic moments, events with suffering so great or circumstances so extreme that they could not possibly be duplicated by chance in another 10,000 tries. Andy Hampsten on the Gavia in the 1988 Giro d'Italia; Lemond winning the '89 Tour on the final day; Lance Armstrong winning the 2003 stage to Luz-Ardiden with a broken chainstay; those are part of the Mount Rushmore of cycling epics. The everyday cyclist can still have epics on their own scale. Clearly, Sunday could have been that day for anyone for the Alabama bike racing community. With the heaviest snowfall in a decade having graced central Alabama earlier that morning, a little taste of Thor Hushovd's Norwegian home lay before me. I fully expected to embrace the elements and race the second leg of the GSMR Training Series in Gallant Sunday afternoon, but less freeze-tolerant (and probably wiser) minds cancelled the race Sunday morning. After it stopped snowing around noon, the sun promptly came out and made for a good day to ride, and my chance at an epic experience will have to wait.
Training this week is going well so far. I did a good fartlek run Monday morning plus a 2000m swim that evening. I need to get a lot of schoolwork done, so time management is going to be key. I only got one workout in today, a hard 1 1/2 hr ride over the Ross Bridge loop, because I needed to be able to talk in case Mission to the World called to talk about opportunities next year. But the next entry for that. The graph for today's bike is below. Plan for the rest of the week is to fit swims in tomorrow and Thursday, with rides and runs in the other spots. I might head home Friday depending on how much work I can finish, but will definitely be back to do GSMR race #3 (now #2) that includes the climb up Chandler Mountain. 
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