A tale of three races.

My blogging has sucked lately.  OK, maybe it is not a recent thing.  Anyways, I've lined up for three races since you've seen this blog chugging along.

Dickie Scramble
A 120 mile gravel road race, much of it on roads I've been on, some of which I wanted to check out.  It was the first year running, things went well, roads were good (would have been better if not for the forced reroutes).  I ended up pulling out early after having extreme IT band pain up a climb around 50ish miles in.  Up until that the pace was modest and I felt no problems except the tightness in the leg muscles/IT band.  I spent the rest of the night stretching and dealing with the knee pain that comes with the tight IT.

Sandwich 50 ENDURO
Might I say, this is the most premier race that is not broadly covered on Cyclingnews.com or Velonews.com.  A 50 mile mountain bike race in my home town on the world famous Eastwood singletrack; also known as the MN endurance state championships.  I am rolling all fatty 9:zero:7 off road this year, and was unsure of the toll my body would take during a long mountain bike race with lots of accelerations and punchy climbs on a fat bike.  My goal was to start steady, and that worked out well as my body did not want to go into 5th gear.  I rode, talked smack, and watched the top 2 disappear into the distance for the first three laps.  After the 3 lap mark it seemed everyone around me slowed down and disappeared.  I was in 3rd place with no one anywhere in front of or behind me.  So, I set the body in "cruise", finishing out the last lap with a mouthful bacon and the burn of a bourbon shot from a mid lap pit stop.  I came away very happy with the fact I didn't even start feeling tired until the end of lap 5 (there were 7), and ended with plenty in the tank.  I am starting to think there is something to this proper sleep thing, as I felt great after a few nights of good sleep leading up to the race.  Also, 3rd on a fat bike in a field that contained roughly 10 Pro/cat 1's is not to shabby.

Thursday Nights at Buck #1
Remember that sleep thing I just mentioned?  My sleep lacked significantly the 3 nights leading up to Buck.  Add in I could tell my allergies were kicking in made me wish I had entered the 3 lap fat race and not the 4 lap advanced.  Well, after a getting bogged down way in the back at the start my chest tightened, mouth dried up no matter what, and I only went backwards.  I tried to rally, but my body only revolted worse.  I pitifully rode the 4th lap as I did not want to dnf, losing several minutes to those around me.  Not sure how I placed, but it was way way back.  This morning I woke as if I got hit by a truck, so either I am sick, or allergies are kicking my butt right now.  It is probably allergies.

Any who, that is that.  I got my hands on a cool new product that I'll mention here soon after getting at least another ride on.