Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Big Wrench

Well, work has nearly thrown a big wrench in my racing plans. Unless something really falls through, I'll be traveling to Germany for most of next week. I had expected this trip to happen in late August, not next week! My departure time is early Sunday evening, the same day as the Stony Time Trial. I'm thinking about moving up to Sport for this race just to get an earlier starting time (to make sure I make my flight!); it's probably about time to move up anyway, despite my lack of results in Beginner. Since it's a time trial, race distance is the same either way, and I shouldn't be that much slower than most of the Sport guys. Unfortunately, moving up probably submarines my chances of getting a good result. I'm also not happy about having such a big stressor happening right around the race.


I had planned on racing a crit near Grand Rapids next Saturday, but I'm guessing that I won't be feeling up to it between traveling and being off the bike for a bunch of days. I guess if I feel good on Saturday, I can just show up and race.


In other news, I tried my new warmup routine last night. It ended up taking a lot more out of me than I'd expected. There was a mitigating factor though; it was extremely windy last night. I did the warmup on the paved road around Stony Creek, and for the bulk of the first 15 minutes, I had very little wind or a tailwind (I was suspicious when I saw I was going 20mph on my mountain bike with little effort). About the time I started my intervals, I turned into the teeth of the wind. The wind made the intervals extra tough, and my "easy spin" time at the end wasn't so easy. I took a stretching break after that and then rode about half of the TT course. I felt just OK on the trail, my legs were a little drained for most of the ride though.


Tomorrow (for my birthday, I guess) I'm going to do my warmup and ride basically the whole TT course. We'll see if it goes a little better in different weather.

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