Sunday, September 7, 2008

WWW.don'tsinktheboat

Finally this weekend I started having good races. I'm a little surprised that it took me until this late in the year to start feeling strong and fast-fast. Hmmmm.....maybe I better re-visit that supposed "training program" thing....

I had a little "winning" streak this week- 3 W's in under seven days. Pretty decent odds. The first was at Shenendoah 100 last weekend. It was a pretty awesome race- the course consisted of long climbs and delicious singletrack-definitely the most fun hundie I've done and one of the only with a female SS category- 'preciate that Chris. So my first "win" was kind of a gimmie, since there were only two of us in the category. Oh well, I got a nice wool hat out of it.
That race left me good and worked over this week (but I wonder why, it was only 14,000 ft. of climbing?) and I still tried to go out and hang with the fast-bois Tuesday Night Who's-Got-The-Bigger road ride. I love a good measuring contest. But this week the pace was set at blistering from the word go, and me and my burning thighs kept ourselves company for most of two hours. Toward the end we met up with a couple of other dudes who also chose to ride their own ride and we pedaled up some nice climbs laughing at how the group ride of twenty had dwindled to five or so. When I got home the roommate known as Drew was lamenting that he had stayed with the group for the full 50 miles and said it was the first time he had ever felt like he might fall off the back. I was glad I had dropped when I had, i.e. within the first ten miles :)

The next day, my adventuring partner in crime, Judy, and I went out to pre-ride the National Champs course in Lees McCrae. We decided to tag-team the course and learn it inside and out. After last year, though, it may be more productive to start running instead. That way when it rains the entire week before and the course becomes a mudfest, I can be prepared to jump off the bike and cyclocross the whole event. I believe the winner from 07, one Kylie Krauss, said she ran more of the course than she rode. Now that's a mtb national championship event. Anyway, during the ride I managed to strain, sprain or slightly pull a muscle in my leg, plus my headset was missing a spacer and I kind of felt like I wanted to die or never ride my bike again, so I ended the masochism an hour and a half in, went back to the car and stretched.

If the sillyness would have only ended there.... but no, Thursday was a new day, with plenty of time for foolish choices. Since I didn't sufficiently learn my lesson on Wednesday, I thought I would join in on weekly bike polo Thursday night. No matter that I wanted to cry at any thought of pedaling and that somehow my legs were STILL sore. I guess I'm one of those hard headed types. Even so, bike polo ended 45 minutes after game on. I was one goal away from peacing out due to being tired and crabby when another rider and I got tangled and I limped off with a good knocking in the knee and ribs.

So I finally got the point and didn't ride at all on Friday. And I went to bed at 10:00.

Saturday dawned too early, but at least I didn't want to die anymore. I stumbled around my house for an hour or so and then headed off to Dark Mountain for the first of many collegiate XC races. I generally hate these short blazing races, and I couldn't imagine that I'd go fast with the week I'd had, but by just finishing I would pull in some enormous amount of points for the ASU team, so what the hick, I gave it a go. It was pretty funny. I won by 10 minutes. Over an 18 mile course. And it was really hot. But it let me know that I still had some punch, even if I felt worked, and made me wonder if worked is a good way for me to go into races.....
Even so, I thought the Rivers Edge Marathon Southeast Championships this morning were going to be a minute to minute battle with myself....
but wrong again. I turned 6 laps (8.6 miles each) in crazy temps (94-100 degrees). And apart from the heat and my inability to eat anything during the race, I had a relatively easy go of things. My lap times were amazingly consistent-within a 2 minute range of each other, and fast enough to smoke the women's field and all but 6 of the men's field. Plus I met my goal of a sub-5 hour finish. I ate 2 half-flasks of gel plus an individual packet, a quarter of a banana and a bunch of cliff electrolyte drink. And I scored a dynamite trophy of some dudeslice downhilling his huffy bike with bar ends (picture to come). now if I can just get that flogging molly song out of my head....

4 comments:

Carey Lowery said...

Congrats on your win and an awesome O/A. I wanted to race but just could not find the time.

Namrita O'Dea said...

Congrats, but I don't know how you can say you're just now getting fast..you've been smokin fast all along!! :)

Namrita O'Dea said...

heyl yah i'm going! are you?

The Ghost of Jerry Reed said...

Congrats on fast race wins