First Race of the Year

[Bike Lover]

:(:(

I'm normally excited about the first race of the year but this year is different. As everyone has been complaining about, the winter was way too long. I tried to train indoors but it's difficult to get motivated when it's dark and cold out. Just this week it started turning. I jumped out a few times to ride only on the road and I'm so outta shape it's not funny.

I am somewhat lucky in two respects though; 1) the first race is a TT and 2) from the sounds of it, I'm not the only one that hasn't trained lots yet. Of course, the second is from other racers and we all know how that goes. The only thing worse than "lack of training" stories are "fish stories". :D

Anyway, how'd the winter affect your training this year? If you had your first race already, were you able to do alot of training before hand and how'd you do at the race? If you haven't raced yet, are you getting good training in now? Just wondering where I am compared to random people on the interwebs.

[ghettocruiser]

It can't go any worse than my first race of the year.

Sitting on the leader board when I crashed out on lap 1.

[Bike Lover]

That's harsh, Ghetto.

An update. Since I have yet to actually ride a trail this year (did I mention how $hitty the weather was?), I went out last night. As I was riding to the trail, I noticed I needed to adjust my derailures. I did that at the trail head. I started down the trail feeling pretty good. That is until I turned and/or went on a down hill. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I didn't feel comfortable or confident like I normally do. To make matters worse, there was a guy I raced against last year catching me!

We got to the trail head and as we were talking I realized that I failed to pump my tires up from their long rest over the winter. One mini-pump later and a some-what properly inflated front tire, I was off again. This time feeling the mojo. I was able to keep my speed up and gained my confidence back pretty quickly. Woo. What a relief.

Now that I've a trail once this year, I think I'm ready for racing now!:rolleyes::o

[xcracer13]

Winter in Texas. 50deg. and sunny outside =]]]