Start of El Tour training rides.....

kids after the first "long"  ride of training (I told him his shirt was on backwards but he didn't care)

So, it might have been apparent to you that I have laid off the blog a bit lately.  Much of this is due to the fact that I haven't biked a whole lot, and it's a bit of a strange thing pulling off of so much riding and refocusing.  I've decided to slow down a bit and ride more with my kids.  Life is too short and though it may sound blasphemous,  I don't think too many people will remember me for all the huge rides I did,  but my kids will remember me for all the kids rides we did.

You may recall that I said I signed them up for the 35 mile version of El Tour this year.  Well,  they upped it to 40 miles.  This has caused me a little concern and brough up the need for a little more thought on how one get's his 8 year old boys to ride 40 miles (my daughter has a standing engagement on that day so she won't be joining us).   I have devised a training plan.  The key is that it can't suck all the joy out of bike riding for the boys.

So, the plan today was to ride 12-13 miles for a starter ride in a longish range for an 8 year old (and a 6 year old on a trail-a-bike but I was towing her so she was just doing backside training).   As we prepared to go out the door by son with ADHD had a coniption about how boring it was going to be.  I was between a rock and a hard place but then I remembered he loved to work with music going on and I offered to let him put my cell phone in his back pocket and let it play tunes for all of us.  This did the trick.  In fact, I found myself getting a pretty good workout pulling my daughter and trying to keep up with him.

My other son, despite my advice,  did not eat enough before we headed out and got hungry about the time we got 4 miles out.  The plan then became to ride to Sonic and back (with a little bit of a detour on the way back).  I am proud to say they made it to Sonic,  and they also made it back and had energy to spare.  We got 11.65 miles in and I wish I had brought my bike computer so I could have seen the average speed.   They climbed the gradual uphill very well.  The El Tour route will be downhill mostly for the first half,  I just have to get them so they can churn those last 20 miles out.  We have 9 weeks,  I think we can make cyclists out of them yet.  I am hoping we can finish in 4 hours or less but I am not going to push them too hard.  If we can get the miles in I will be happy.