My achilles continues to make progress. I took 400 mg of ibuprofen at lunch and dinner and overall it felt pretty good. All day I kept track of it and stretched when I could. I'm not sure why, but for about thirty mintues before supper, it was aching the most it has in a while. I don't know if that was the ibuprofen wearing off, but after I'd eaten and taken some more, I felt fine.

The pains I did experience were the best I can hope for from my achilles. They were low, near the heel and not the terrible grinding that can be mid-achilles and usually has me out for a month. I'm also increasingly convinced that the pain is from big efforts with my seat too high. I did a brief spin on the trainer after violin tonight and the only discomfort came if I tried to "ankle" at all. I was only trying that to prove my hypothesis. I did a few brief one-legged drills to finish out the night.

The plan this week will be to drive in again tomorrow, then hopefully ride Friday morning easy with the team. If all goes well, I'll race this weekend with the emphasis on getting races in to upgrade. My fingers are very much crossed so that I can go in to camp next week with a clean bill of health.

At lunch today, I finally had a chance to read the section on strength training in Joe Friel's The Cyclist's Training Bible. Now I've hammered out the regimen I want to follow for training this season. It's fairly similar to what I used (or should have used) in college--with the exception that I will have to rely on machines rather than free-weights.