Return to Racing

After nearly 10 hours of testing Friday I was ready to return to my normal riding routine. Well as routine as I can have anyways.

Before we left town with 300 pounds of reference material we did a nice 20 mile ride to Ridge Road and back. Going for a ride after studying 400+ hours but before an all day test was perfect. During the ride I convinced myself that I'm probably one of the few cyclist out there who could read all the equations Andy Coogan spits out in his books and be able to fully understand what all the terms are without having to look at his references.

Saturday we repeated the same ride to Ridge Road and back, but it seemed more enjoyable since I didn't feel like I was neglecting the First or Second Law of Thermo. But I did think about the Moment of Inertia of my calucations I couldn't get right the day before.

Later Saturday we did a family ride from the Great Rivers Greenway parking area at 141 in Valley Park. Pretty decent. Only one rough patch of bike path. I had been wanting to check it out for a while. Can't wait until they get the next stage of the Greenway open along the Meremac River.

Sunday I ventured out on the racing ciruit. Choose to remain a 4 again this year. Probably should race the 3s. I'll try and do a 3/4 race next time. Sunday I got there later than I planned, but thanks to Shark-time I was early. The race before mine started 20 mintues late. No worries. Talked to some familar faces, registerted and warmed up with a teammate. Lined up at the start with 1-2 minutes to spare. First announcement was they cut our race short by 2 laps. Now big deal to me. Started out and it was pretty clear that wind would be a factor. Remember wind drag is nonlinear. I took my position near the back. Couple reasons. First, there weren't many racers so being at the back still meant I was in the top 40-50 riders. Wasn't sure about those racing. You get used to racing the same people and since I had not done a crit in 6-7 months I wanted to see who was a weapon. Figured out those folks in 2 laps. Third, I had only done 1 interval since December's cross season and I wanted to ease into this race. Finally, since there were no real corners I wasn't worried about any hard breaking and hard accels like you normally see in a crit.

Overall the race went as I expected. It hurt some, but overall because of the wind it was pretty low key. Almost to slow really. I was able to move up when I wanted. Managed to miss the wheel rubs and the guy who rubbed his foot against the inside curb for several feet. On the final lap my strategy of hanging out at the back fell to pieces. A rider who was 5-6 riders in front of me gapped the field and the guy behind refused to move around. We were single file into the wind and a 15 yard gap opened up and that caused us to get dropped of the back. Kind of sucked. I really was impressed by they guys who sprinted out past me for 30th place.

Tonight for recovery I put a new drive train on my nine year old mountain bike. I think I dropped 2-3 lbs just by putting on a new bottom bracket and set of cranks. I also cleaned up the single speed while drank a glass of red wine.