Day 8 - Mississippi

So I want to say that to date Mississippi is my favorite state we have ridden in.  I know we have only ridden in three so far but it was really great.  Scenery was great, weather was fantastic and I felt good, all made for a good day.  I did not have any great revelations today, but did have a chuckle with my dad.  We were talking about all the pine trees down here.  I made the comment that I think they are lodge pole pines and he looked at me straight faced and says nope I think they are badminton pines.  Ha ha dad they used the wood to make rackets.  Anyway we had a good laugh about it.  This is so cool to be doing this with him along, it is really motivating.  I cant wait for our entire family to ride in to San Diego together wow that is going to be amazing.

Mississippi is fairly flat where we are even though we did ride our share of rollers (rolling hills).  There were tons of tress, beautiful properties and houses.  Seems like everyone here has 10 acres and a lake that they live on.  Kyle got chased by a couple of dogs.  Now here is what i don't get, the dogs that chase kyle are about the size of a football.  The dogs that chase me are like small cars what gives.

So for those of you that are wondering how did we get ready to do this let me give you a little run down.  Cycling like most other activities incorporates the entire body.  Yes a lot of it has to do with legs but you need a strong core, arms and upper body to support the load.  Our first step was to create a strong foundation on which to lay the cycling machines we hoped to build.  We did this by completing P90X, each morning at 5am we would meet in Shane's garage and workout.  These workouts were 60 minutes long and were both weight training as well as stretching.  This is a very difficult and intense program if you are interested, but the results are worth the trouble.
Kyle and I then partook in a weekend long training at Carmichael Training Systems (CTS).  This is owned by Chris Carmichael who is Lance Armstrong's coach.  We won this weekend by participating in an MS raffle.  Our Coach Jason (who by the way is very helpful) volunteered to put together a training plan for us to follow that would get us in shape for the ride.  I am here to say it helped out tremendously, it gave us pointers on proper pedaling techniques, set us up for increasing our endurance and cadence.  All in an effort to increase our cardio vascular system and lactate acid thresholds.  We basically rode 4 days a week, these rides included hill climbs, tempo rides and simple high mileage days.  Once the base was built we simple kept building on it.  If you are at all interested in becoming a better rider I highly recommend attending the classes and picking up Chris Carmichael's training book.  I have read a lot of books on training and this one is fantastic.  It lays out a great system and explains everything in great detail.
Thank you Jason for all of your help and generosity.

We are not in Texas and this ain't no Bull