Sunday, August 9, 2009

A tale of two rides

It is amazing how different two rides in the same week can be. A few weeks ago I was planning on doing my first time trial as a way to get back into racing in a way that would be very unlikely to result in a crash. The weekend before I had done some very good hard rides and my legs were feeling good. I was unable to do my usual Monday night recovery ride because I got stuck on campus later than I should have been. By Wednesday I went out on my usual KOW (king of Wednesday) ride (race) and my legs felt horrible. I got dropped much earlier than I had wanted. After a slow ride home I decided that it was not worth the $40 and getting up at 4am on Saturday to drive 2 hours to go to a 40K time trial just to come in dead last.

That Saturday I got up to do my usual ride and felt much stronger than I expected. In fact I stayed on to the lead pack about 10 miles longer that usual. My best Saturday ride the year!

I was disappointed with not racing that day until I looked at the time for the cat 5 racers and the winning time was around 1 hour. I know that I could not have finished in 1 hour so I felt ok with my decision. Hopefully some consistent training over the next couple of months will put me in good shape for a possible TT in the fall.

I have decided to give the Hotter than Hell another shot. After last years ride I figured that I had checked it off my list and was not planning on going back but I am getting than itch to go again. Plus a number of my friends are planning on going so I can't pass it up.

One of my riding friends is planning on making his racing come back (to a cat 3) next year and will be training to do so. I am going to try and put a training schedule together for us and get my self in back in racing shape so when I can start racing again I will be able to get to a cat 3 in a season.

Enough for now, time to go to sleep and attack the last week of being in TX without Nici.

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