Wasted a Saturday, which is like killing a unicorn. Had to skip my morning ride for my nephews birthday party, which I really didn't have to skip considering it went 2 hours later than planned. So it was what I call a 'flip day' one that was planned as a positive day of training and turns into a negative. See below:
Planned Morning: 70-85 degrees, no wind, fast group ride, healthy breakfast.
Actual Afternoon: 95-105 degress, 20-25 winds (mostly headwind), solo, lethargic from cake and ice cream
@
caloso, glad you're okay. One of my biggest fears is causing an accident and injuring someone else. That's got to feel terrible.
Originally Posted by
tommyrod74
I agree that the goal is to upgrade, and that's OK. I just meant that once one reaches one's terminal category, as many of us have, there can be a sense of "what now?" after a few seasons.
The social aspect means more to me now that I'm in that stage of my racing life. I enjoy having teammates, and I'm lucky that we've purposefully built a team of people I like to hang with, and would even if we didn't ride bikes. I like watching them improve, too, and helping where I can.
I've raced about 40 times and have yet to race with a team mate. Our team is more of an ambassador program; guys race but no one races full time. The bike shop really just wants a presence in the local scene, and tbh that's probably a better model to actually getting consumers in the door. Its frustrating, I'm friends with most on the team, but its frustrating when we have a circuit race 15 miles from our shop and we have 15 guys show up to a shop group ride and only 2 race that day.
The thing is, I'm probably a good teammate, but I'm terrible solo. I just have no kick and not having that 1-3 minute surge is a death knell in racing. The one thing I can do is go on the front and put in good watts for long periods of time, which I'm sure is useful to someone. So I may race with a real team next year. Being a Master's racer in the IE we're limited to 2-3 teams though.