It's finally getting into the cooler weather that lets us do more long rides in Arizona.

My group was training for El Tour de Tucson today - planning for 85-90 miles. Our ride followed the El Tour route about 70% of the time. We stayed together for about 10 miles, but then the fast group took off, and 4 or 5 of us stayed together and met up with the others at various stops. Ugh- head winds of 18-22 for quite a while! My small slower group of 4-5 skipped one leg of the ride to for a diabetic rider to get some food, and then one of the other guys started feeling like his legs were "done" at about 60 miles. So we cut our ride short, and I split from them eventually at about 68 miles and rode home in a slightly circuitous route to get 83 miles and about 2500 feet of climbing. It was pretty nice except for the wind.... My legs felt good at the end and I could have done another 20 or 25 (El Tour is 111 miles) but not if there was much more climbing. Passed 5000 miles for the year- last year I only had 4900 on Jan 31.

Tomorrow I'll probably skip riding in favor of grading papers....