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Took time off from this. Things are good…. except for my fitness. Not so good. Coulda probably pushed on through but why fight it? I must have needed a break. Been riding a little and running a little. Haven’t had the will to suffer and without that I can’t do much but doink around. It was weird changing that header-ma-doo from “36 years old” to “38 years old”. Shiminy. Getting back into the groove. Going for a bike ride with BW. Fun until lunch. Then it got fairly miserable. It’s my fault though. I drank way to much the night before. I’m not sure how much but when I went to bed the room spun and I thought I might have to put my finger down my throat to ease the pain. Mid 20 degrees at the start was tough but after 15 minutes or so it was ok. Then after an hour I was nice and warmed up. Problem was I didn’t take off my wind breaking layer and sweated up all my other layers real good. The lunch stop allowed me to chill nice and wet then the rest of the ride was miserable. I need to remember to take off the wind layer once warmed up…. and not get shit-faced the night before. Oh…. another thing I learned. When you’re looking for a cheesy holiday sweater at Goodwill go to the women’s section cause the men’s section doesn’t have jack.
Cold and wet. Seemed like good CX racing weather. First race of the day so there wasn’t too much mud yet but a lot of slick wet grass. I took the start out MTB style. I was surprised when everyone fell in behind me and didn’t try to jump me into the the slick off camber around the back of the track. I guess that’s the difference between the roadie and mtb start mentality. I remember thinking that things couldn’t have started more perfectly. From there I tried to get small gaps on anything technical which eventually worked when we go to the downhills. Had a small gap on the track at beginning of second lap. Settled into a groove and went with it. The track go better every lap as the grass got a groove in it. 3 laps to go Jimbo said ease up. Gap is big and you need to race tommorrow….. or something like that. So with 2 to go I started easing up. Then suddenly I was having trouble breathing. I’ve never had any asthma issues but if I had to guess what it felt like this would be it. I even stopped at the far back side of the course to see if I could get things under control but it didn’t help. Lets were fine just couldn’t breathe. So my lead goes from not being able to see anyone behind me to about 20 seconds. That gives my chaser some fire and he’s coming on. I just had to hold on. It was kinda miserable but I managed. After the race he said he thought I’d crashed because suddenly there I was. I think I would rather have crashed. The effort was good enough for masters state champ so I guess none of the drama matters. A training tidbit. After my last mtb race in early October I got pretty slack and didn’t do much for a few weeks. I wasn’t worried about losing base fitness just high end and the ability to go hard – coast – hard – coast over and over every 30 seconds for 45 minutes. I decided to do Tabata intervals a few times a week. A typical Tabata workout is 8 x (20 seconds on / 10 seconds off). The on is all out or about 98%. Not a full on sprint but really really hard. Adds up to about a 4 minute workout. A true Tabata would be nearly 100% in the on phase but I ended up backing it off to maybe 95% and doing 2 sets of the 8. It’s the hardest I’ve ever done and the closest I’ve ever come to throwing up from exertion. I think they did the trick though. 
Photo by Tallahassee Trails Yeah dang! This race was back on Oct 21st I think. I have brain lag. Of course I wanted the W at the hometown race but you can’t always get what you want. I’ve kept illness away all year but unfortunately if finally caught up to me the week before this race. I believe it set in on me the Sunday before after my typical hard ride. I was in denial Monday and Tuesday and just stuck with my routine. Wednesday when I went out for an abbreviated taper week interval session it became apparent that the illness had set into the muscles. I cut the workout short and headed home. Felt bad Thursday and Friday but rested and remained optimistic. Saturday felt alright so I went out to preride the course. Felt good for about 30 minutes then felt very tired. Decided not to race. I woke up Sunday at 8 and felt ok. I couldn’t bare not to do the hometown race so I got out of bed and went out to prep the bike, eat breakfast and get my stuff together. I double checked my stuff and was out the door at 5 til 9. Get on T-ville Rd and went through my bag again…. DANG! no helmet! Turn around go get it, leave the house at 5 after 9. Looks like no warm-up on a 40 degree morning. Screw it. Luckily Terry B knows me and allows me to just sign the waiver and hand her my money saving time. I got a 5 minute warm-up and toed the line. Go. Ah yeah, 2nd into the woods. Up the multi-use hill. Ohh. Hmmmm. Dadgum this hurts. Get passed by a few. Ooooo. Ohhhhh! Clipped a root and have a minor get-off coming back on Caddy. That’s just enough to lose concentration on the race and start thinking about all the negative. This hurts! I’m recovering from illness! I didn’t get a warm-up! Ahhhh shut up and turn the pedals over. So I stay cool and and decide to finish out the lap. If I don’t feel better by the end it’s DNF time. I figure I’ve got a DNF credit in the DNF bank so I’m ok with it. I can’t remember the last time I DNF’d, no big deal. I come around to finish the lap and I start hearing folks cheering me. Hmmmm, this makes the decision a little more difficult. I start running it through my head, “what happened to ric? Oh, he QUIT!”. I get to the start/finish and there’s the crew banging on boards and screaming. I just can’t do it. So I continue. 2nd lap. Pain. Negative thoughts but no thoughts of quitting anymore. 3rd lap. Oh snap! I’m starting to feel kinda good. Oh… hey… there’s that guy from my class. Oh dang…. there’s another one. I must be in 4th right now? 4th lap. I’m feeling good. Maybe I can catch some more? Man, this is funny…. I voted for 4 laps but right now it sure would be better for me if we were doing 5. Come out to start the BMX and there’s the leaders on the track. Dadgum! Nice to finish feeling good though. Result 3rd. Moral of the story. Get a good warmup. Especially when it’s cold. The dang and dadgums are in tribute to Bobby Bowden. Dadgum!
After trying out the 40 tooth big ring for a while I needed to investigate the 38. The only time I spun out the 40-11 was on long road downhills so I it seemed like I could go even lower and stay in the dog full time. I also wanted . . . → Read More: The 38/26 2×9 experiment
This bike came to me from Jimbo. I was over at his house picking up stakes to use at the Red Bug Challenge and he said he wanted to get the bike out of his garage. He suggested we raffle the bike at the race. Sounded good so I took . . . → Read More: My Bike: The Green Machine This was a race of 1sts. 1st time starting on a road behind a motorbike. 1st time doing a course with over a mile and a quarter of road per lap (~6 miles total). 1st time being put into the woods by fellow racers (twice). 1st time being thoroughly cussed out during a race. 1st time . . . → Read More: FSC #2 Fernandina Beach |
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Kinda Interesting?