A short update today with more to follow. I have thoughts about good students, bad students, the Republican party and a number of other things rattling around in the ol' brain case but I'll stick to something a bit easier to digest for this post.
Cycling has been a bit up and down of late. The results from the two races I've done in the last few weeks, both time trials, have been OK and a rival or two have emerged but I'm struggling to get into some kind of training rhythm. After the end of the Chattanooga races I feel like my motivation really took a big hit. In trying to come back I think I overdid it a bit and had to back off. It's only been the last couple of days that I've felt like I've been able to get in some really strong training rides. Last Sunday I ripped off an epic ride with a full hour just short of TT pace followed by another two at solid tempo and last night I finally got to do Tuesday Night Worlds. It's amazing how much harder your teammates can push you than you can push yourself on a ride like that. While circumstances have kept me from doing the ride until now, I certainly plan to do it a lot more over the summer. I'm going to have to in order to get stronger.
The last two TT's I've done have been a part of the Georgia Cup TT series. The series has been pretty good overall with excellent courses. Some of my teammates have complained that the prizes being given out are a little cheesy (they are) but I'm really happy to have a series to race in. For a long, long time we time trialists have had to get by with short, "afterthought" events tacked onto omniums that do little to prepare us for state and regional championship events. These races have been so much better than that. My only real complaint is that since the results aren't USCF affiliated, the results don't get counted in our rankings. Still, that's a pretty minor complaint.
The cool thing is that, as is often the case in these sorts of discrete event series where folks can make a majority of the events, there is a bit of a friendly rivalry emerging between myself and two other riders, Igor Rudalev and Shawn Tyrrell. All of us are strong time trialist with Shawn coming from the triathlon community. Each event it's a competition to see whom will beat who. In the last event on a hard, rolling course in Juliette the three of us were separated by just 26 seconds after 19 miles of riding. Shawn beat me by a mere five seconds which is about a dropped chain cost me. I seem to have a bit more power at threshold so I do better on the flatter courses while Shawn, who is a good bit lighter than me, does better on the hillier ones. I'm in third place in the series due to my mechanical in the first race and it's unlikely that I'll overtake either of the other two unless they also miss a race or have a mechanical problem. Still the competition at each event is very cool, especially now that the organizer has decided to start the three of us at the end of our field so we have a better sense that we are racing each other. In Juliette I could definitely feel the mental pressure of having those guys behind me. I'm almost certain I rode faster because of it.
Thanks for reading and look for more soon.
