Saturday, July 25, 2009

The beat goes on.


So the summer continues and I'm feeling back on track for the most part with my racing. It is kinda weird this time of the season as I am feeling like I could ride a thousand miles a week, but Coach Don has me tapered and more intense in my training. Sometimes the hardest part of being a racing cyclist is holding back and being smart when you need to. 
I have had some more fun with racing as I have decided to go out and give it all I have at each race. I know that sounds like that is would should be done all the time, but early in the season I was racing but didn't feel I was mentally eating up the coarse as much as I should.  I am heading to the end of the summer season and plan on doing just that. 
Since the last post I have had a few more races. One of which was the Indiana State Crit Championships in Bloomington. This was a great place to host a event and it was put on wonderfully, and had a fairly good spectator turnout. I had a poor start, and by poor I mean all the way at the back of a 19 women field. I had a piece of plastic get caught in my cleat and took  a long time to clip in. This was bad since the ABC train starts off quick from the get go, so I was forced to expend a ton of energy for 4 laps just to get back to the front of the pack. However, by that time Bri K. was off the front and my good form of the day was wasted for the win. When I say win, I really mean that I believe I would have contested Kovac for the win with the way I was feeling. Otherwise, I got in a chase group and got some help from a Get a Grip rider to chase the top 3 gals and found myself disappointed in what I feel was a desperate attempt to block our chase from the Alderfer Bergan rider. I understand blocking in road racing, but I feel the rider went a little too far today by riding dangerously in the corners. Blocking for an Indiana state race is not worth wrecking people in my book. Regardless, I was able to pull back third place singlehandedly which was fun. My goal was to maybe beat 3rd or at least give us the opportunity to contest it. Since this was a Alderfer teammate of the now lapping Bri in my group, she chose to inform me that, "there is no sense chasing her down, because we are just gonna beat you anyway." Maybe so, but I came to race. I thought that was what we were doing? And race I did, it was a sprint for 3rd and I end 5th, but at least I was racing. I ended 2nd in the 3/4 cat. Not the results for my potential that day, but I rode super strong, and think I had a good showing for DRT in what is now the home town with Revolution Bike and Bean. 

This was also the first trip for the new RV. I decided to trade in the new camper for a used motor home after almost forming an ulcer over the stress of hitching and hauling the camper. Let me say, the RV is the way to go! It was great and Anne an I loved it! So much less stress. 

The next day I had the DRT Bloomington xc race. It was super fun to ride this venue again. It has a great roller coaster front half, and a punchy climbing second. In years past I used to hike a bike a couple hills, but now I had no problem with them. It was fun to see my personal improvement on a coarse after a few years break from it. I had a good race and set some great personal lap times that had me beating several of the guys times. I had a win on the day and can't complain about that. I just hope to add a few more W's to my book really soon!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

did you change your cell #?


TB