Some Bike Racing

This weekend was my first chance to race me bike since coming back from Cali. My bike finally got here on Wednesday, so I got to have my power meter back. I didn't think that had become one of those people who can't ride without power, but it turns out that I'm pretty close. I felt naked on my rides and didn't ever know how hard to go. I can't believe it has gotten to this point, I gotta work on distancing myself from my SRM.

Since I've been home, the training hasn't really been where it needs to be. With Little 5, and the post race functions, I have maybe been slacking, but I guess it was probably a good mental break. Anyway, about that bike racing. Saturday was a Crit/ Circuit race in Columbus, with a pretty cool loop and a slight roller to the finish line. My type of finish. There was a pretty good turn out with a decent number of quick guys from the area. I went with the early attacks hoping to find the right combo, and about 10 min in we found the right mix of 8 and got a gap. It grew pretty steadily up to about a minute and we had enough time to do the "late race everyone look at everyone else" thing. Brett Stewart put in a good move with 3 to go, but we were able to claw back up to him and set up for the finish. I jumped a bit early for the sprint and started to fade going up the hill and had to settle for 2nd. Maybe I'll learn from that, maybe not.

Today was another similar track, with another longer up-slope to the line. Something I haven't mentioned was that there is a team at these races with about 10 dudes, about 3 times what anyone else had. Today I went with with a good number of moves early, and missed one with Jake Rytelewski in it. It didn't have a member of the 10 man team, so I wasn't that worried, assuming that they would maybe actually ride the front and try to bring it back. I was wrong. I tried to start/ get in some secondary breaks, but for some reason they would let 1st and 2nd go up the road, but wouldn't let anything else go. Whatever, I'm over it. I started to try to set up for the sprint for 3rd, and came to the bottom of the hill 2nd wheel and was forced to go a bit earlier than I wanted. So I lead it out and got passed by a large handful of dudes and ended up 10th. I felt like my legs were ok this weekend, but I didn't play the sprints too well. Oh well, more racing to come.

next weekend is going to be a crazy hard road race in the Brown County State Park, on the loop that they had the 87 Pan Am games RR. It has a stupid amount of climbing and we do the lap 12 times. It's gonna hurt. Sorry for the update-less week, I promise I'll do better this week. Check ya later.