Tuesday Night Quickie

Ok, so I was originally going to act like this past Tuesday's Weston Race never happened, mainly because I thought following up a whiny Stowe Derby post with a whiny Tuesday night post would out me as a guy who is kind of whiny. Which, of course, I am, but I put a fair amount of effort into hiding it.

But then Cary called me out in the comments and if there's anything I can't get enough of it's being heckled on the internet, so here we go. The whiny preface is that Tuesday after being sick for two weeks, Tuesday was day #4 of "getting on it," so I had done like, a lot of manly working out 'n stuff the past couple of days, and didn't sleep much because of the Stowe Derby travel debacle, and waaaah, you know? I got on the sweet fixie to ride home at 5pm and my legs were like, "just so you know, don't expect much."

But you never know, right? Sometimes you feel flat but go fast, sometimes you feel great until the race starts, sometimes it doesn't even matter because you're just drafting some guy while skiing on ice. So I went to Weston.

Motivational issues put me into line around 12th place when we got moving, into a first of many super-icy, dark hairpins. Everyone outside the top 3 had to slow way down, tip toe around, and then go mach five to get back on. Invigorated by getting accordion'ed all to hell in the first 30 seconds, I went all out to win a drag race against Dave Stamp and successfully captured the tail end of the front group.

Next time we accordioned, another guy popped off, so I went him to stay on, and then another guy dropped, so I went around him -- can you see where this is going? Oh yeah. Working extra hard to keep getting back onto a group you probably shouldn't be on is not a recipe for success, so I blew up after ten minutes and cried for my mommy.

Eventually a trailing group of four caught and slowly trickled past me. My inability to hold the draft of the second-to-last guy made the last guy decide to come around me, and I realized it was Blazar, which gave me that extra bit of motivation (and draft) to hang on.

I trailed him for a lap and then attacked at the end like a dirty Norwegian. It worked -- but I'm not proud.

Since then it's been all rollers, all the time, except for that time it wasn't. Ski training is over, although ski racing sure isn't. The new bike is ordered, and I'm still about 100 watts away from being fast enough to ride it. Crap.