Rain, rain, go away!

The trails have been solidly wet for the past two weeks. The city is within half an inch of its all time monthly rain record. We are expecting more rain over the next two days.

What this means for me. I almost headed to Chattanooga, TN. Yup. I almost made the decision to drive 6+ hours to reach dry dirt in order to ride/train on my race bike. The only reason I won't be heading out tomorrow night... they are expecting horrible thunderstorms for the next two days. This leaves me with two options.

Drive 4 hours to Cleveland to ride inside at Ray's. Or take care of some chores and errands and train in the rain on the road. Tough choice. It sucks being a responsible adult.

So I will let everyone read this over the next day and leave comments as to what I should do. I am not saying that I am going to listen to you all... but it could be interesting.

Oh... and here is a long promised photo from the first race of the season. Yes... this guy really liked my socks. He took/posted three photos of them through out the day. I will try and get some good photos from my next race.

OMBC #1: Simonton Windows Challenge at Mount wood

Mountwood Park is located about 3 hours east of Cincinnati in West Virginia. This should have been enough of a warning for me. West Virginia = mountains. And being east of us... we had downpours yesterday = they had downpours last night. That pretty much sums up this race. But not really.

The sport course was 17.5 miles long with 2000 ft of climbing. The high temperature for the day (during the race) was 87 degrees. Yes there was some mud spots and some long loose climbs, but for the most part the trails were just tacky.

My start wave had about 50 riders in it so we really took off from the gun to try and make it to the single track first. A group of 4 got away about a mile in and I bridged up a minute or two after they got some distance. The rest of the race was pretty crazy. I made some pretty crucial mistakes like falling off of a ladder ride into deep mud, sliding out in way too many turns, getting stuck behind caught riders for too long, and, the biggest mistake, not taking two water bottles. I took one. One small one. And didn't take on more at the first aid station. Dumb. Because when it is 87 out and there are no leaves on the trees, you bake. Literally. We all looked like roasted pigs at the finish line. Stark white under our jerseys... bright red wherever we were exposed. So I was out of fluids by the halfway point with only one aid station where they would hand me a Dixie cup. Awesome.

I wound up in a group that contained 3rd, 4th, and 5th in our Sport 19-20 group. 3rd (not me sadly) put in a nice acceleration with about 2 miles to go that neither of us remaining guys could handle. So we let him ride off and I tagged on the back of the second racer for about a mile and a half of soggy, steep single track. We finally hit the pavement with about a half mile to go and I flipped my remote lockouts (amazing!) and gunned it with everything I had left. I looked back twice and he just couldn't match it. I wound up with 4th place and a nice 29er tire.

I'll post some photos once they are up on the website. Now off for a post race shower and BED!

Mid-Day Break

I am having an average off day for me. Here is the timeline.

7:30- Wake up to ride
8:00- Roll out the door
8:30- Meet Tom at the trail
12:10- Reach Trek Store: West Chester to pick up car and talk shop
12:30- Get home, throw on recovery tights, and slam milkshake down
1:00- Throw laundry in and lay in bed with feet on wall to drain blood; work on blog and race calender
2:00- Load car for mountain bike ride and head out
2:20- Pick up bibs at Trek Store: Blue Ash
2:30- Meet David to head for mountain biking
3:00- Hit the trails
5:00- Hit the road home
6:00- Get home

I miss the good old days in Damascus where I would roll out of bed in the morning eat a nice breakfast, watch Mike and Mike, and roll out for a 5 hour ride. Riding out of a city kinda sucks. I'll post more on my training and race schedule when I get a few minutes to breathe.

Enjoy the awesome weather!