Probably need to rest

Been having so much fun with the new road bike that I've not even noticed that I've ridden hard daily for almost a full week!

60-75 mile rides last Saturday, Sunday and Monday complete with 20+ mph paces and sprints!

an 18.9 mile road TT on a pretty hilly/tough course Tuesday which I completed with a 23.6 average (48 minutes) and was able to beat all but one of the 8 guys who showed up with full-on TT setups as well as all others in the non-aero classes. Hard to use this ride as any sort of a reference because I don't know where I stood vs. any of the other riders at any time in the past, but this was a lot of fun and seemed to point toward my fitness going in the right direction.

And lastly a Wednesday night "recovery" ride that wound up being just over 90 minutes at a decent pace as well.



I've been feeling very strong and have been happy with the way my fitness for "short" events seems to be coming around, but I knew that the Thursday night race would be tough this week!

Regardless, Trevor and I loaded up and headed to River Falls. The Buck Hill Thursday night series is done for the year and the border battle has come and gone. This means that some of the racers who normally do Buck Hill are now free to come over to WTR and that some people are likely to stop showing up because they can no longer use it as preparation for the border battle. Functionally that combination led to a small, but very strong field featuring Barry Tungseth, Chris Fisher, Matt Muraski and (of course) Trevor as well as a few others.

Apparently no one felt a whole lot more inclined to race hard early on than I did because I was allowed to take an early lead and hold it for most of a lap (Trevor and I traded off a bit just to ease the load). However, I touched a tree on the steep climb during the 2nd lap and had to put my foot down. I expected to be able to jump on right after those four passed, waited for Chris to go by and jumped on my bike... but didn't go anywhere. Somehow my chain had dropped. I tried to get organized and back on, but I'd let a gap form that I was never able to close again. The rest of the night I went back and forth between pushing too hard to try to catch back up and then being forced to rest. In the end I wound up about 2.5 minutes behind. All in all, not a bad result for me but not something great either. Who knows how tired those guys were going in too. Thursdays could be a day when someone has nothing in the tank or when they are well rested and ready to fly at race pace and you just never know.

We had a good conversation and a few good beers afterwards. Somewhat sadly the conversation quickly shifted toward cx season and then onto snow sports... I guess winter is coming.