A day of anguish & off to the races

Seattle to Atlanta
Sunday, April 16, 2006

Yesterday I did just about the worst race ever. Definitely the coldest, rainiest (snowiest too), and cruelest suffer fest I’ve done since I stopped mountain biking. For the past week it’s been raining incessantly to the point where you actually look forward to riding on the trainer. In fact, on Thursday when I did my PM 2 hour heat effort, I did an AM ride on the porch of 2 hours as well… I guess that’s the only option when you can’t tolerate the unrelenting nature of the northwest rain… I ended up getting sixth in what was left of a field sprint (Brad’s team mate won, which was good). I was glad when it was over, but I still had to ride for two more hours. It’s not that bad when you get dry cloth on to go back out.

Now I’m off to Georgia though. After several weeks of absolutely focused training specifically for Georgia, I’m anxious to see how I stack up against the other guys. The biggest thing, as was the case at California, is going to be positioning coming into the climbs and, of course, the time trial. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the time trial is going to be a killer here- it’s twenty miles with a series of steep climbs. Since my longest tt was the one in California I’m fairly certain this is going to be a “make it or break it” kind of experience. If history means anything though, the prologues have been what kill me. Without one here I’ll be better off, hopefully. It all starts on Tuesday.