Weekend Roundup

I love the feeling of come Monday, you're ready for another weekend to start. Most people recuperate on the weekends, take time to do stuff around the house: projects, cleaning, rest, etc. Not our house. We race our bikes on the weekend and win money! Yay!

Saturday morning we woke up to crappy weather. And by crappy, I mean cloudy with a 30% chance of rain. (My mindset has COMPLETELY changed since living in Seattle. Rather than feeling like I have to get out and exercise in it no matter what, I am now selective. Honestly, there are that many nice days here. I still ask myself, why did I wait this long?!?)

We slowly got out of bed and then frantically packed the car for a double race day. I raced first, starting at 11:35am in South East Denver. The prize list was pretty good - with 3 one hundred dollar primes on the line. Right before the start, Benjamin reminded me that the primes would pay better and my focus was singularly on that bell. The first prime came and I jumped hard. So hard that my rear wheel peeled out. So hard that I had at least five bike lengths on the person behind me. And so hard that when they rang the bell for the second prime on the proceeding lap, I dug deep. Really really deep. And I won another prime. $200!

Unfortunately I tapped into my upper limits, hitting a new max power and unable to recover. It seriously felt like a track effort, I went so hard. Did I need to? No way. I could have razor-ed. I should have razor-ed. But instead I blew my wad going for it. I showed my entire suite of cards. "Look what I can do!" (Dope!)

So when Therese's attack came immediately following the sprint, up the hill, I tapped out. I could only maintain 120 watts. The pack was splintered, Benjamin was on the side of the road giving me "what the?!?! go get those girls!" and I had nothing.

Zip.

Zilch.

Nada.

$200 bones. And a hole dug so deep, I didn't recover until about 3pm that afternoon. The race ended and I finished- last place.

In the meantime, Benjamin, who for the record has been training since his return from Australia and is racing in the Cat 35+ 3's - crushed it. He won the field sprint for second. Bam! Guess what his prize money was? $20 and a gift card.

We waited to sign up for the last race of the day - the men Cat 3's, which started at 5pm. The clouds were hovering, threatening to dump rain but Philly's coming up and pack maneuvering and positioning practice will always come in handy. Plus I convinced Therese to sign up as well. So the three of us played with the boys, moving around, positioning out of the wind, setting up for the sprint. With three to go, I came to the front and kept the pace up. Benjamin set himself up for the final sprint and managed 2nd - AGAIN! Another $20 in prize money.

We woke up Sunday morning, feeling like a train wreck. The weather did in fact move in as we were finishing the last race and we opted out of a cool down so we could get warm and drink beers. But training was in our cards so we headed up to Captain Jack's on the mountain bikes with Joey. And I swear, that ride is my ALL TIME favorite trail. It puts the biggest, cheesiest shit eating grin on my face than anything else. Plus it's free. We actually were rained on - so we rushed home, ate a plateful of nachos and passed out on the couch for 3 hours. A perfect weekend, if you ask me.


Next week: Superior Morgul. A Colorado classic with the same course as the Red Zinger Classic. Bring back the 80's!