blah blah blah - 40 degrees, snow, and 20-30mph of wind

The title pretty much describes sundays circtuit race. I felt blah. Actaully, my legs felt pretty ok. I got a bunch of sleep, had a good warmup, and had ok legs. Nothing crazy, but not drained by any means, which is always good. It was windy, crazy windy, like 20-30mph of wind, and gusts. I met mike (carnegie mellon - rbr) right after the gun, his pink bar tape is quite distinctive. Felt fine for the first few laps (i think we did 11 or 12 maybe?). Got up to the front at like 4 or 5 to go, spent a lap or two in the front 5, didn't do any work, but just spent some time up at the front. The finish was a long uphill, maybe 2% grade. Not enough to give any climber a real advantage, especially considering it was into the wind. Each time we would hit the wind and that slight hill (more like a false flat) the speed would drop from like 25 to 18, then jump back to 22 and stay there 'till we left the wind. At the bell lap I sort of knew I didn't have it in me to sprint, especially with the wind. I slowly drifted back, was like 4 from the back halfway into it. At the 2nd to last turn, the kid in front of me lost his wheel. Sort of annoying, but who really cares if I was going to pack finish or first chase group? Right then we hit the wind, the pack kept the pace up as the sprint lead outs were in full force, and it was clear we weren't going to close the gap as it grew from 25m to 75m before we hit the last turn. Myself and those behind me sat on the kids wheel, and there were maybe 4 of us, caught a kid who lost the pack with the speed of the sprint, and then sprinted.

I was out front with like, um, 250m to go. Great. Some kid came past me and got a maybe a wheel on me, and I threw my bike to hold on to.....33rd place, great. It was actaully all not bad, as I ended up sprinting, which I wouldnt have in the pack. I took 2nd in a 5up sprint, which I was fine with. I also timed my bike throw perfectly, which was awesome. The kid I beat even gave me a fist pound for a good sprint after the line.....in the driving snow, which was sweet. What happened to sun and warmth?

Overall, it was a good weekend of training, I stayed alive, had fun, and got some experience under the belt. I was something like 85th on the TT - 7:15:XX over 2.8 miles. Winner of a's was like 5:53:XX......winner of c's was 6:10:XX. So while I am not much of a tt-er, clearly, I was pretty far off and need to get better, it was a really short tt. Jeff beat me by about 1.3 seconds, nate was about 10 seconds up on him.....nothing I like worse than getting beaten by those two.....Jeff was also like 5 spots up on me, with his 1.3 seconds. I ended up 39th in the crit, not 40th, but who the f cares, really?

I got to stop at home on the drive back, got a nice chicken parm and a break from driving, which I did 6 of 8 hours today. Wayyyy better than the drive down. I got #636 for collegiate racing, which is good, I usually do well with numbers that are sequential or symettrical, for some reason. I was 232 and 454 in my best 2 'cross races last fall, and 345 in my best crit last year.

The week is over - week whatever of training. 5 days of riding, 2 of them races. First real intervals on the bike earlier. Also 2 days of lifting. 131.31 miles of riding in 8:06:05 on the bike. Short week, should have been more but I missed my 1 hr spin on friday, and took an extra day off. Oh well. Next week will be big with no racing, more gym, and some good motivation to train harder-er.