CX is still hard

I went ahead and signed up for the CX race today. Single speed. It was hard. I kept my SS mountain bike gearing, 32/18. Glad I kept that! Just simply switched the fat tires for CX tires. Easy change.

Got there early enough to do one recon lap. That was enough. Then they lined up for the start. 15 SS. Started us 10 seconds in front of the other C racers. My goals were not to crash, not get crashed, and have fun. Pretty much accomplished those goals. Although I did a nice slide on the 180 on the pavement on the final lap. No injuries except the ego. Thank goodness for sealed parking lots, they allow you so slide without injury.

The start was not bad. Took a spot at the pack and just took my time. Passed a few folks on the climb the first lap and then that was it for me. Just riding laps after that. I forgot how hard CX really is. It is hard. No bones about it. It was awesome! I settled in and battled a few folks back and forth. I did manage to make up some ground on the climbs and the long run up along the fence. I have to give Jonathan Schilling some props for his cheering on the hill. For a young lad he did some great cheering and did a good job of motivating me, and others.

I ended up getting lapped by Chris Connelly, but he lapped a ton of people. I wasn't last and I think it was a good day to return to racing.

A Typical Day

So since I'm not really racing or training for anything I don't really look at any data anymore. Until the other day. I began to think, which is never good. Cyclist always look at their data after a race or a training ride. It used to be heart rate was the big indicator. Now a days it seems like any low life Cat 5 has a power meter. Some people use them for good. Others just use them for show. I'm still in the heart rate monitor mode. Anyways, since I'm not racing I figured I would log my heart rate for a day at work. Could I see moments of stress? How low would my heart rate be while I was in deep thought. Would a cup of coffee cause a heart rate spike. I even went so far as to try and write down when I got up, ate, drank, etc. to see if I could detect those spikes and lulls. Well here it is. My typical day. All the spikes pretty much equate to getting up to do something. Walk, talk, get a book, whatever. A find it interesting that my maximum is 112 BPM which I'm fairly confident there are some around me who would log that for a minimum.

Bubba is upon us

Less than 24 hours until Bubba. Night race. Mudd. Cowbells. Beers. Racers. Bullhorn. It will be an event not to be missed.

I could try and tell my version of what went down at the Burin, but Team Seagal did it with a far surperior state of writing. Click the link to the right.

I had a great time spectating. No injuries to report for me. A fellow Shark suffered an open fracture on his first of three laps. He is a tough dude to do 2 laps with a broken bone in his knee!

I did spend an hour on a Di2 equipped bicycle. If you have the means...

STL CX 2009

The schedule is out. Two night races. One on Halloween. Time to polish the cowbell! Even my daughter has got to have more cowbell. She picks them up, rings them, and smiles up at me. She's got the cowbell fever and there is only one cure, more cowbell.

I continue to prep for CX 2010. Did 2 hours of hills last Friday. Today I road home from work. Big milestone for me. It was windy as all get out, but at least it was dry. There were a few spots where I did some hops and manuvering the bike to avoid or go over some pavement gaps and those slight efforts sort of bothered my healing foot. So no mountain biking for a while. Friday I will ride back to work. The ride in will be a nice cool weather ride on the CX bike to test out the brake hardware.

Country Road

Another milestone in the road to to cyclocross 2010. I road outside today. An hour. Nothing earth shattering, but it was 8 weeks to the day it all went down. I made sure to avoid a couple things while at Castlewood. Well really two things. PBR. Running. No foot snapping would occur this day.

In other news random news....

It appears I should polish up my resume and send it to Renault. But I fear my resume could be lacking in the dirty rotten scoundrel area.

Tom Danielson is out of the Vuelta and could be out for the worlds team. I understand that the road racing season is long and tough, but I tend to question the lack of a serious assault of the world championships by the US. It is like the US team look at the road worlds like French cyclist look at Le Tour. They just give up before the race starts and don't even try for the win. Maybe the fact there will be 3 US based Pro Tour team next year will change that. Maybe the USAC folks should get off their buts and actually try and ride the wave of cycling popularity and put a full on Dream Team assault on the 2010 road world championships. You don't see lame USA participation at the track world championships.

Guess it is moot at this point because cyclocross gets in to high gear this weekend. Locally and nationally.

Don't Call It A Comeback

After 6 weeks of doing nada I got back in the saddle. No crazy wrist snapping like what occurred at Binder Lake, but the full weekend of racing and crashing had me inspired. So I put mountain bike pedals on the road bike and took the trainer for a spin. Foot is still a little swollen so went with mountain bike shoes which have a little more room in the foot box. I had my left shoe on but hardly buckled. It has been so long my tires were at 20 psi so I had to air them up. When is the last time you aired tires to ride the trainer? It never felt so good to spin the 39/23 on the trainer. Managed a few intervals of 39/21, but that about it. Total ride time, 25 minutes. It is a start. Don't want to push too much because I don't want any set backs. Only thing that would be worse than getting injured would be getting re-injured. Plan is to get 30-60 minutes a day until I can get back up to full song and begin riding outside. Next year is my year.