Instead of building off a really great Ore To Shore race and heading into another weekend of MTB racing, things didn’t quite go as planned.
Earlier in the week, it seemed to be taking forever to feel recovered from O2S. I kept thinkin’, ok, tomorrow I’ll feel better… and the next day would come and the same thing.. ok, I feel better tomorrow. Finally by Weds, things seemed to be getting better, I was in particularly good spirits – decided to hit a really hard 40 minutes of intervals in my 2+hr ride… it went decent, but by that night had me right back to feeling fatigued…. or maybe it was the bar league softball game that went til 11:50 that night… that’s an entirely different story…
Anyways, this time of year I can get a some allergies kicking in on occasion as well & that sometimes masks what the real the problem is so I’m pretty sure that was part of it too. Hence, with just over a month of racing left, taking a break for a few days and skipping both the Calumet Deer Chase and River Falls Border Battle races was the advice I got…. and took. Believe you me, not in the least bit easy. I know taking a break was the smart thing to do… why is it so hard sometime? Calumet has some of the all time most fun trails to ride and with River Falls it’s a good race and I like to drive down that direction whenever I can.
So what’d I do instead? Well, stuck pretty close to home, worked on the trails here and then at the last minute Sunday evening decided to pre-ride next weekend’s Seeley Pre-Fat race course – “evening” being the key word. I swear I’ll never learn. I get so used to the having daylight past 9 o’clock in the summer that by the time mid August rolls around & the sun is setting considerably sooner I find myself stuck out on the trails in the near pitch dark. Tonight was no exception and almost a replay of 8 or 9 yrs ago when we got a late start pre-riding the Seeley course and truly had to feel our way out of the woods.
Fortunately, I recalled a short cut, but still didn’t get back to the car til 9. It’s definitely pretty dark by then. Oh well, someday that stubborn & persistent (or is it foilable) person inside of me will learn… actually, nah, I doubt it. Make things interesting and keeps life humorous. And we could all use a laugh more often even if it’s at our own expense.
Well, congrats out to the racers at Calumet & River Falls, I’m sure I missed a good time. Gotta thank Tom Carpenter for filling me in on how the Calumet race went, that definitely would have been fun ripping it up.
Looks like I'm probably down to only three MTB races left…excited, but bummed that the season is winding up too. Seeley Pre-Fat Sat 27th, Copper Harbor, MI Fat Tire Festival Sun 4th and then the grand-daddy of races Sept 17th the Chequamegon 40. All different, but all great races. Not a much better way to end the year than with those ones. Perhaps I’ll pick up another race after that however I’m also looking forward to another cyclo-cross season. Have some news on that horizon I’ll share later…
No comments:
Post a Comment