A Good Idea at the Time

I would like to be able to say racing made a comeback this past weekend, but I can’t really back that one up. At least I got a nice training ride out of it…

Since racing only one race a day is clearly for amateurs, I went for the double XC of the singlespeed and expert races at the local Haw Ridge XC race. However, my legs quickly let me know that they were not at all interested in racing at XC speed. So my singlespeed race instead turned into an endurance training ride. After finishing 2 laps of the 8 mile course, I had about 15 minutes or so to switch bikes and bottles for the expert race.

Well, I would have used that time to switch bikes if I had gotten around to bleeding my front brake on the superfly. So instead I rolled out for the expert race as the only singlespeeder. The ½ mile flat road start against the gearies quickly saw me spinning madly as everyone dropped me. I did manage to make it to the singletrack before 1 of the women who started about 15 or 30 seconds behind, but that was it. The course was pretty tough for Haw, as it went straight up one of the rockiest, rootiest, and loosest climbs in the entire park. That one definitely ended up being a walker all five laps.

After the bad legs at the start, I began to feel better with every lap. My laps were pretty consistent, with laps 2-5 all being within about a minute of each other. On the third expert lap, I finally started catching some other racers and managed to pass 3 people. I knocked out the 40 miles in right at 4 hours, so it wasn’t terrible for an endurance pace on the ss. I was pretty happy with that considering how tough the course was. As for results, I ended up with a pair of 3rd places, which sounds good until I point out I only had 5 other competitors between the two races.

Not really sure what happened to my legs. They had finally been feeling good for the past week, but apparently not good enough... Thats how it goes though somedays, everythings shiny, and then Bam!

And just like that, you're left with only the disco ball of broken dreams... Nothing else to do but pick up the pieces and roll with it.