Hump Day

Rode a nice, new route to work today. 20 miles from Logan Square to Northbrook in eighty minutes door-to-door, counting the stop-lights. Not bad on a 30 pound fender bike with a lap top on my back in near-constant head wind. Much better than dealing with the displaced Edens Contruction road-raging ophans on the much more direct route, Milwaukee Ave.

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Just heard about a stage race I think I'll be doing. The Tour de West Lafayette. May 17-18. Means I'll have to miss Monsters of the Midway, but that's ABR, this is USA Cycling. So 3 chances to get points. It's all Cat 4/5 and 3events: Saturday Criterium of 35 minutes on 1.3 mile, 8-corner course. The road-race looks pretty lame, though. a 5 laps on a 4 mile course? With maybe a couple thousand feet of climbing over the whole race. Meh. 5 mile TT right after. It looks overall like a quick and intense effort, but a very good chance to get a lot of points towards my upgrade. But there is also a team category, and I think there will be at least the required three of us (myself, Jeff Holland, and Jon Dugas) to be eligible. This could be quite fun.

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Dropped off Uhuru (my Trek...get it?) at Coach's house last night. He's driving the bikes in the van to Asheville tonight. I leave with the rest of us tomorrow on a 3:45 flight to Charlotte. We'll arrive in Asheville at the B&B around 9:30. The first ride is Friday morning, up Doggett Mountain. My Dad got a kick out this when I gave him our itinerary. He lives in Asheville now, of course, but back in '79 through '83, he lived just around Doggett, between Asheville and Great Smoky Mountain National Park, in Spring Creek. My Dad's house he built is still there, although he doesn't know the people living there, except that they were assoles who wouldn't even let him on their property..."Lady, I BUILT this house!" Oh well. 9,100 feet of climbing that day, and then Saturday is Devil's Courthouse. Sunday is the real fucker, Mt. Mitchell. The tallest mountain east of the Mississippi. This ride, along with Friday's, is a century. Talking with Randy last night about the weather, he is toying with the idea of switching these days due to the fact that Sunday could be much colder and rainier, so we might try to the really high climb done in Friday's warmer climes. So Mitchell could be right off the bat. Awesome.



It's going to be a great camp with all very strong riders and a great chance to push myself even harder than San Luis Obispo and catapult my fitness into some really uncharted territory.

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Speaking of which, after this weekend's team ride and racing, I've really realized how much stronger I've gotten over the last year and in all seriousness, it's just time to harden the fuck up and change my approach to my racing. If I'm well rested and have proper recovery and warm-up, the threat of getting dropped while just being in the pack is not the threat it used to be. Seeing the pictures of the finish in Beloit this weekend, I was a lot closer to the winning sprint than I thought I was...and I had quite a bit of gas left. Now I'm not so much down on myself as I am pissed-off. I was afraid to stick myself out in the wind for even a second to better my positioning, or to hug the shoulder and rub wheels. And what fun is being afraid? As Peter says, it's time to get mean.

Now I just have to wait almost 2 weeks until my next race, and I think I might just go insane. Good thing though, cause I was going leave my sanity on top of Mt. Mitchell anyways.

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Quite a thunderstorm last night, eh? Spring is here.