Is it too early for reflection?

But first, some pictures.

Day 1 after my crash. Ew.

One week post-crash. It almost hurts more now then it did a week ago. Of course, I was pretty heavily medicated that day . . .

So, here we are! It's almost August (!!!) and I only have 5 more races in 2010. Wow, how time flies. I started reflecting on my season when I wrote down that, no, I didn't achieve YET another goal of the 2010 season. But . . . it was outside of my control. Also, for financial reasons I let my coach go, and planned the next month all by my lonesome. And I got to thinking . . . 3 more weeks of heavy training (I'm a little detuned right now after tapering for Cascade and then NOT RACING), 5 days of racing, and it'll be time to hang up my skinny tires for the year. Time for a fall of mountain biking and hiking and, gasp! maybe even some running and swimming. All the things I don't do enough from November thru September because I'm riding my road bike. Damn roadie.

So, now that the season's coming to a close, how do I feel about it? Well, surprisingly, pretty good! So I fell short of a couple of goals - the district TT because I was cooked from Hood, and Cascade because, well, you know. All that can be done is be happy for the goals I did achieve and refocus on 2011 with new, loftier goals. Not sure what those will be yet, since I'm not sure exactly where we'll land, but I'm confident I can find a place wherever that is.

What a wild month

Sooo . . . wow. July's almost over, August's almost here. July is usually my favorite month - my birthday's on the 10th, it's beautiful and warm outside and I log lots of time at the river, mountain bike trails start opening up . . .

I think my cosmic order was off this time around, though. Things just didn't go quite as planned. Where to start?

• Davis 4th of July Crit - umm . . . wtf happened? Went into it excited to attack and race hard for our sprinters, and ended up trailing off the back the whole damn time. I suffered in the heat, and I later realized, struggled in the corners. Subconsciously I was freaking myself out and letting myself get punked going into every last one of them. Undoubtedly fall-out from my TdN crash. Lame. Anyway, pulled out with 5 to go, tried to explain it, just sounded like lame ass excuses . . . moving on.
• Geiger Grade HCTT - I averaged 14 watts lower than my last time trial up Geiger, yet I was 1:20 faster. Umm . . . another WTF moment. Still failed to break 40:00, still managed to get 2nd, still holding the lead in the SNHCTT series. At least until the Mt. Rose TT . . . that one's gonna hurt.
• And finally . . . . drumroll please? Cascade! Holy shit, what just happened?! Oh yeah, I crashed out on the 1st stage (not counting the prologue, which isn't really a stage, just a whole day of sitting around, 1 hr of warm up, and 4 minutes of racing). Yeah, 1st stage. 18 miles in. We were on a descent, going pretty damn fast. It hurt. I tried to keep going, but my body said no. Now that I'm healing up I fine myself berating myself for not finishing. But I listened to my body and made a decision. In retrospect it's easy to say, "oh, I'm such a wimp, I should have kept going", but the truth is that my left leg was nearly useless and I had 54 miles and 6000 feet of climbing to go. I'm pissed, I want vengeance, I got lucky. Instead of being out for the rest of the season, I was just out for the week. And I even got in a couple hours of ripping up some sick Bend singletrack. Hells yeah. Make the best of a bad situation. Anyway, my totally radical teammate got 9th in the GC. So it was a good week, even though it was a crummy week.

So what now? Despite my lousy week, I find myself mentally recommitted to road racing, at least for another year. I'm going to go race Winters, Vacaville, Challenge and the Giro de SF. As much as the thought of racing a full season of cyclocross makes me all weak in the knees, I'm going to take a break this fall. If only to come back to Cascade next year for personal vindication. I honestly have NO IDEA where we'll be living next summer, or even 6 weeks from now, but I'll make it back to Bend for that damn race one way or another.

Seriously thinking about moving to Gloucester, MA for the fall (maybe longer) and racing 'cross. A dozen UCI races within 4 hours of me? Weeeeee! Buuuuut . . . who knows. By the way, I am not talking about moving 3000 miles away solely for cyclocross racing - Cody can make good money there, too, and we can live for free. So I haven't totally lost it. Yet.

Isn't it amazing how you can go from crazy-motivated to wicked burned out seemingly overnight? And what amazing timing, too - just a few days away from the biggest, gnarliest stage race I've done yet! Oi. Taking a few days to try to recharge and improve my attitude about this whole mess before making the trek northward to Bend. I don't think we can call it the land of cowbells in July, maybe I'll make it up there again in December . . . .

mmm . . . . 'cross . . . .

Thoughts?

I'm thinking of ending my road season after Cascade and racing cyclocross. Am I utterly insane? All season long I've been thinking, "I need an off season, I'm not going to race 'cross." But now? Ugh, I need help.