East Coast Cyclocross, yo.
On our first day back, first thing I did was swing by the shop, and title sponsor of my new cyclocross team, Seaside Cycle! We’re also sponsored by Antero Resources, which is an oil drilling company, so I’m told, and a very generous sponsor. The new kits are pretty cool looking.
Anyway, I tried to get the 5 day car ride out of my legs over the course of the week, because just 5 days after arriving here I got to race the New England Nationals – Gloucester Grand Prix. Racing in my hometown is awesome. Seriously, there’s nothing better than sleeping in my own bed the night before a bike race. Plus, there’s a lot more people in the crowd cheering for me! Which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how the race goes.
Over the course of the week I went on a couple of rides with the guys on the team. One was a relaxed spin, with a little technical skills riding, and checking out of the weekends course in Stage Fort Park. The second day they were heading out for some “threshold intervals”. I figured, oh, I’ll probably get dropped, but whatever. Right before we started I was informed, “340-350 watts for 15 minutes.” Hahahahahahahaha! Even sucking wheel, that was too much for my yet-unrecovered legs. I did my own thing, and spent the rest of the week trying to get my legs reattached.
Anyway, the race ended up being super fun. I had done only one ‘cross race prior to this one, at Folsom Cyclebration, which was several weeks ago. Day 1 of Gloucester was, as a result, incredibly rough. In addition to being LAST after the start and crawling my way through the tight turns, I totally died about halfway through and lost 5-6 places. The good news was that I seemed to work the rest of the yuckiness out of my legs in that solid 45 minutes of pain, and I didn’t get lapped or pulled. Sunday’s race was much, much better. I was solid throughout, and beat one girl who’d tried to ride me into some park benches when I passed her the day before (bitch). Seriously, she did. And then when I cracked she passed me again, so I was pretty determined to not let her beat me again. Hooray! The bad news is I sucked on all things running, despite actually training the run this fall. The good news? Um, I sucked less than the day before at everything else! Hallelujah.
This weekend was the Providence, RI UCI race, which I bailed on at the last minute because I’m unemployed, still, and broke. And really tired, which makes me thing I might be fighting a cold or something. Next weekend I’m heading to a regional race up in Maine, and the following weekend is the second in the Verge series. I’m having a bit of a slow start to the season, but I think things will improve a bit by December.
And now . . . I’m going to go ride my mountain bike.
2 comments:
Keep hammering away at it speedy! You'll get it! :)
I gotta say, you're TOTALLY rockin' the new kit. I love it :-) good luck with everything and I'm quite sure you'll be riding strong at CX in no time!
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