Many athletes in many different sports often refer to 'it'. As in on any given day you have 'it' or you dont. Today I did not have 'it'. A combination of a lot of factors lent themselves to a hell of a day in the saddle for me.
I wasn't feeling with it pretty early on, as in like the first lap (out of 4). Hard to tell exactly what was throwing me for a loop but I think it was probably a combination of the heat, my sore knee, my still somewhat tired legs from last weekends big ride, and a digestive track that I think has been rebelling the last few days due to all the ibuprofen I have been taking for my knee. Cocktail for disaster. But my body sent a clear message and I read it loud and clear so I will probably be taking some time off the bike this coming week to try and really recover.
minus my meltdown, actually I'm not sure you can even call it a meltdown...I don't think I ever officially got going enough to have a meltdown. The race went pretty well. I rode most of the technical sections cleanly, no major crashes. This course is renowned for high DNF rates due to flats on all the sharp rocks, big crashes and mechanicals. So I suppose even finishing considering my bodily issues was a pretty good accomplishment.
They added a new reroute to this course that made things very difficult for us single speeders. Added quite a bit of very technical climbing and a new very technical descent (that I had to walk on the last lap because I didn't trust my tired self being able to navigate properly...first time I have bailed on a technical descent at a race ever I think) I limped in, literally, in 2h 30m ish. That is pretty horrible for me on that course. Not sure what place I came in, something happened with the timing and they werent able to post the results at the race. I think there were about 10 SS starters give or take.
Hopefully I scored some points, I really need something to justify what I put myself through today. The next three weeks are going to be interesting...recovery is going to be the name of the game for sure.
*UPDATE*: Found a link to results and currently they have me coming in 6th in SS but I think they still have some things to work out because I saw two names that I know raced SS but their results are listed in other classes. So in reality that puts me in 8th, scoring 88 points towards the overall. If these results hold out, I have moved up from 10th overall to 5th after 3 races. I put up a hilarious 2h 42m time which is a literal DFL for Expert Men by probably 10 minutes or so haha.
Surprisingly though if I had raced my age group in Sport I would have put up a very decent time. I remember my third lap time was about 1h 48m which would have put me in about 4th in Senior II. Not bad considering how annihilated I was and that I was riding SS. Lately I have been toying with the idea of building up a nine speed and racing in my normal class just to see where I stand fitness wise on similar equipment to people in my age group. So be on the lookout for a project thread if I decide to start another build at the end of this season...
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