The Winters of my discontent

Perhaps I am all talk. I have a pretty high batting average for the top stressors in life these days - we bought a Vacation Rental in Healdsburg which we had to set up and are now trying to manage ("Rural Realities" have hit hard). We then lost our apartment and had to move. Then I switched jobs. Oh, and my wife is pregnant. All good things (OK, moving sort of sucked) but stressful and not leaving a lot of time for riding.

Nonetheless I have probably managed to maintain some semblance of my early season form by getting up at o dark thirty and riding to work with the Google folks, and sneaking in a few Healdsburg area rides. Not the sort of hillclimbing that leads to faster times but keeps the base going. Also my wife spent her first trimester completely naseous so instead of us going out on brisk couples rides, we tried to keep her from getting sick. She's feeling better and is riding a bit, but now the issue is becoming the inability to lean over due to bulging belly and sore back. I'm trying to find a more upright hybrid we can use for a while, and a trainer.

I entered the Winters Road Race 2 weeks ago and found out that not only am I still off top form but my strategy sucks. There is a small hill, I decided to wait until the start and then go to the front and try to slow it down and then lag climb the hill. Thing is, the hill starts shallow enough that all I did was give a lead out to the strong men before they attacked at the steeper part. The hill has several saddles in it and had I sat in and not used my bullets I probably could have made it to more saddles and then maybe reconnected on the descent. Instead I was worked and got not much more than an entertaining training ride.

I am thinking of doing the Mt Tam Hill Climb just because it's nearby (if the aforementioned stressors don't render that impossible) but hopefully I will be able to get the training to tune things up a bit. The most important component should be diet, hopefully with the fresh produce coming from the garden/trees and us watching Jill's diet, I can make some headway there.