Update from Rap-Dog

Hey Greg!
I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks as I have been tied up at horse shows. I have been continuing working on getting my times down and have been able to make some progress.
After our workout on Saturday, June 14, I took a long bike ride. Few people knew it, but it was my 50th birthday, so I guess I am now officially on the downhill (not!). Since it was my 50th, I decided to stretch my ride out to 50 miles. I felt good and the weather wasn't too hot, so I pushed on and completed the 50 miles in 2 hrs and 45 min. While not a blistering pace, I was still able to maintain just over 18 mph average for the ride. I really believe the running we are incorporating into the workouts helps with stamina.
This week, I decided to try to pass my personal best (PB) on a 30 mile loop that I ride near my home. This ride has a few challenging hills and a lot of rollers, so I need to work hard the entire ride to take out any time. My best time ever was 1:38:00 for this course, which is about 18.4 mph. My typical training times over the same course all last year hovered between 1:40:00 and 1:43:00. Last Tuesday, I was able to drop this to 1:36:00, which I thought was a good result.
Last night I thought I would really try to open it up and ride hard and push the pace on every hill. As a result, I improved my time further to 1:34:00, which was four minutes faster than my old PB at an average speed of over 19 mph and 2 minutes faster than last week.
I really am happy with these results and attribute this improvement to the strength conditioning that Crossfit offers. Core strength is vital to climbing efficiently and I can now climb longer and harder with less fatigue than in past seasons. I still am amazed that I have almost zero back pain and am able to recover very quickly after these hard efforts. I have never been able to drop times this quickly from week to week and always got stuck on plateaus that seemed to go on forever. While I still need lots of improvement, I feel confident that I have a more focused path on getting to the next level.
Thanks for your advice, support and making me work hard at the gym--it really pays off!--Joe Rap