Until the Snow Ends

Oops! I did a race in California, and then segued it into a full-fledged vacation and totally forgot to write about it! I've been hanging out in San Jose and riding for a week now. Meanwhile, my websites went down (internet! noooo!) and I am too busy pedaling, eating and sleeping to fix it. Since Linnea got her PRO license we had to go to Sea Otter this year, because that's where PRO s go in April. Like salmon returning to the stream from which they were born, only with fewer spawning opportunities, if the sausagefest that is the expo area was any indictator. As I'm but a lowly Cat 1, I had to race Friday with the rest of the non- PRO folks, and instead of racing the new, absurd, 5k PRO course we were on the traditional (and also absurd) 19-mile course that they've been doing for years. And we were riding 2 laps of it. 38 miles? I haven't raced that far since the Darkhorse 40 ! No, wait, I DNF'ed the Darkhorse after 15 miles... so I haven't done...

Dudes! MTB race season is back! It's April, so everybody is absurdly pumped to race the same old Hopbrook course! Time to prove, yet again, that me riding fast in a 30 minute TT doesn't mean I will ride fast in a 2 hour mass start! This time around, the race conflicted with Battenkill, so it didn't draw 400+ racers, and everyone couldn't start asking, "omg, is mountain biking BACK!?" (No. It's April. This always happens.) But we still got 20 guys in Pro/1, so I would have a bunch of dudes to chase and pass when they broke their recently-put-together bikes...unless I was one of those dudes. Actually though, since I was on last year's race bike the odds of finishing were high... much higher than, say, Linnea's odds, after she, Kevin and I spent all of Friday night cobbling together something for her to race on. (Before I forget, she DNF'ed after a lap because her trashed middle ring couldn't hang onto the brand new chain we used. Oo...

It turns out that training crits are really fun . It's been long since established that I don't like doing intervals, and I pretty much only hurt with a number on. I've tried to use road racing to satisfy my number-wearing-training needs before, but I usually end up being bored for most of the event. I'm not strong enough to attack with any success and I'm not weak enough to be anywhere near in trouble of getting dropped. So I generally do nothing, just like everyone else. But! The training crit is a different animal, because there's really no score keeping, so "winning" is only weakly defined. I can do all kinds of stupid stuff, chase primes, avoid the final sprint, and claim that I "won" by meeting my "training goals." And since I had a number on, I wasn't doing intervals, but I was trying hard! So yeah, Wells Ave, you will be seeing more of me. This was my first Cat 4 race ever, and my first criterium ever, so I place...