PGP

In my profession—which, by the way, is the secure transmission of financial data—PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. It’s an industry-standard data encryption/decryption scheme that also serves as proof that the data was exchanged with the desired party.

This evening at New Fane, PGP stood for Pretty Good Progress. It’s what I am making as I prepare not just for cyclocross season but also for a handful of mountain bike races later this month and into September. New Fane itself will be the site of a WEMS race on Sep. 13 and I want to perform well on my home course. Today I posted my fastest lap there so far this year: 25:46.2. That beats the 26:10.9 I posted on July 5. It was a solid workout today, starting with a short warmup in the parking lot and then 3 full laps separated by brief “resets” back at the car:

That’s encouraging stuff, especially considering I didn’t have peak energy the day after a cyclocross workout. The training plan for the remainder of the week is simple: group road ride on Thursday, short solo road ride with a 6 km TT interval on Friday, group road ride on Saturday, and “whatever” (but nothing too taxing) on Sunday.

I will be off work next week; no PGP, SCC, SFG, HTTPS, SSL or any of a hundred other acronyms, abbreviations or (I sometimes suspect) complete fabrications. It will be a week of high mileage and high motivation. Then comes a taper week that ends with the Reforestation Ramble (WORS) on Aug. 24. That could be the first of 12 consecutive race weekends for me.