Less posting on this blog probably means I'm doing more riding, so I guess I've been riding a lot. March has been pretty kind to me. I've been busy with Little 500 stuff and trying to complete this training block. The weather around these parts has been pretty awesome, trying to make up for the crappy February. My Little 500 team, Delta Gamma, just had their big spring Break training block here in town and I took a bit of time off of work to be around the track and watch their workouts, which they have been killing. I like the way things are looking for them on race day.
Actually lets back up for a second. I almost forgot to mention that we had our Panther pb Competitive Cyclist team camp a few weeks ago in Ohio. This was the first time we could get everyone together and get all of our sweet new gear distributed, talk race schedules, and have a few beers. We also got some decent riding in even though the weather was absolute crap. I feel like I've been getting in some pretty good training so far this year, and it seems I'm not the only one. I was pretty surprised to see how strong everyone was at camp. We had a few impromptu sprints up some hills and some good half-wheeling battles on the front. It was fun to finally get to spend some time with the man, the myth, the legend, Kirk Albers. We spent some time on the front together and he talked quietly and calmly as we rolled along at 350 watts and I tried to act like I didn't notice the pace. Really looking forward to racing with version 2.0 of the Panther squad.
Today was my first day of a rest week, a rest week that I feel like I actually earned by beating my head against the wall for the last three weeks. It was statistically and physically the hardest block of training I've ever put in, and my legs are officially toast. I capped off the three weeks with a suffer fest called the Brown County State Park Road Race. This road race is about 25 miles from Bloomington and is on most of the same roads as the Pan-Am games back in the 80's. The course featured a 5+ mile lap with just a shade under 500ft of climbing per lap. We did 12 of those babies. It ended up being 65 miles with 5,800ft of climbing. A few weeks ago when we realized the race was coming up a few people made some bets with me that I couldn't ride to the race, complete it, and ride back to Bloomington.
Being that the race fell at the end of my training block, I didn't want to waste training days just so that I could be fresh for this local race, so I decided to train straight through it and bury myself real good like. Well, I did all the training I had planned and even won the bet. I made it to the race and back, and even completed all 12 laps of the race. Predictably, my legs were pretty tired from the start, but I think it was a good experience. I got dropped by the front group with 2 laps to go and rolled in with a small group for some meaningless places.
Now I'm taking it easy for a few days and gonna ride around real slow to let my legs heal up. I don't think I'm racing again for a couple weeks, but this weekend is Quals for the Little 500 ladies, so that's the next thing on the agenda. Thanks to the couple people who came up and said they liked the blog. I'm going to try to keep it updated a bit more now that there might be some more news worthy material.
