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I really am enjoying this recovery week. However, I did get in a little bit of a hard effort at the Tuesday night ride that meets at the Botanical Gardens. As soon as we hit the slight incline towards the end of our trek on Highway 78 I started pushing the pace a little bit and quickly opened up a large gap on the group. After turning on Old Leeds, I still had a pretty good gap, but for some reason my bike was being gay and I was having trouble shifting into the big ring. I messed around with it for while as I slowed down substantially, and finally came to a stop and manually did it.
I sat in the line of about 5 of us all the way until the incline at the end of Old Leeds. About 1/4 of the way up, I attacked and opened up a gap. Two of the other riders bridged up to me, and when they did, I moved to the side to let them take a pull. They both refused, so I stayed up front. I pushed it a little more at the end and left them both.
A decent group headed down towards Lakeshore, and I was anxious to defend my sprint title from the past 2 weeks. With about half a mile to go, the guy on the recumbent made a move and I quickly hopped on his wheel. Because of the physics and whatever else, those recumbents can haul on the flats (they suck at hills though). I looked down and we were doing 33 right after we took off. As soon as I saw him start to fatigue, I hopped out and started my sprint and edged him by less than a bike length. Hurt like crap.

So far this week has been easy. Besides the 3 efforts on the Tuesday night ride and a moderately hard effort swim on Monday, the rest of the work has been low/recovery HR type stuff. I did buy some new shoes today. I was sick of using my cycling shoes in triathlons so I finally broke down and bought some tri shoes. I suppose I should practice some mounts/dismounts before the race on Sunday.