Training

So, Thursday evening's ride was more fun for Marxo than Sunday's super-hot ride was, but we did it to her again on Saturday morning - we made her ride through her whining, pain, and suffering.  I still say it's character building, though!  ;)

She really had done a great job on Thursday evening's ride.  She was powering up hills that I thought she would stop and walk up and she was generally in a good mood.  But Saturday was different.  We (once again) didn't leave from the house early enough and we were riding in nearly the peak heat of the day (11:30am-1:30pm).  AND, we decided to go to Double Lake Recreation Area (which the kids had voted for the previous night) and it's quite a bit more challenging than the trails at Stephen F. Austin State Park.  But, we figured that we really need to get in some training for both us and the kids before heading to Colorado in only a couple of weeks.

The trail we ride is about 9 miles of total length, but it usually takes us around 3 hours to ride the whole thing.  It's rather technical for a 6-year-old little girl with spindly little bird-legs, so we only average maybe 4 to 5 miles per hour and we stop fairly frequently.  In order to keep the kids happy, we usually stop for a short snack-break at about 2.5 miles and then again for a longer snack break at around the 6-mile mark.  On Saturday, we didn't stop for any snack breaks, so we finished a little faster - in a little over 2 hours -  but it was still unbearably hot.

And to make matters even worse, Marxo fell - right into a bush - and scraped up her arm.  We keep telling her it makes her look like a tough biker-chick, but she doesn't seem to buy it.  ;)

Tonight we're going to go riding up along the bayou again at Buffalo Bayou Park.  It's another two-a-day day for me.  I need about 100 more of these to get in shape before our Colorado trip, but I have less than two weeks to fit that in.  I may have to adjust my goals for this upcoming vacation...