Blather on Bicycling

I came up to Spokane, WA this weekend to race with a different crowd in the Frozen Flatlands Omnium. It was also a good excuse to visit my old buddy from high school.  I seem to be in excellent form lately, and I wanted to use this race as a benchmark for my relative form, since it’s hard to tell by racing with the smaller groups in Boise. Although Boise usually has small numbers, the caliber of top riders is usually very good as evident by their placings in bigger races like Elkhorn and Mt. Hood.

Today’s test answered my question about form–3rd place. And, it was exciting to be racing in an event where we were really racing from start to finish. We were flying, especially when we hit  a tailwind section where the guys kept pouring it on. I was riding the course blind, but knew there would be rollers the whole way. I went on a solo break at about 30k from the finish. A group of 3 (including 1 in the masters category) bridged up to me and we worked it until the finish. We built and kept a sizable gap until the finish. I’ll have to check results to see the time gap, but it must have been 2-3 minutes to the chase. The only thing I was disappointed in finishing in 3rd place of 3 in the sprint. I’ve been practicing sprint training with the local guys and I thought my chances were good because I felt good at the finish. The other 2 ended up being too strong with a jump at about 200m and I hung in for 3rd. The climb at about 20k from the finish was very steep, and really hurt after working off the front for awhile. Otherwise the course was just undulation after undulation, some longer than others.

Matt and Eli came up and had some really strong finishes. Matt’s masters group was racing with mine, so it was nice having my riding partner there in the same race. He was super strong and finished 3rd. Eli also had a good finish in a dwindled group for the Cat 4 field.

On the way home from the race yesterday, my know-it-all little boy (age 3) boldly stated it was going to snow tomorrow. This reminded me of my mom’s trickery when I was a little boy, whereby she often woke me on April 1 proclaiming it was snowing. I wasn’t about to be fooled again, and laughed at him, asking if he was playing an April Fool’s joke on me. No reply. 

This morning I had a double take in the dawn light, as a layer of snow was on the ground with more falling. For awhile it was a little sketchy as to whether I’d be able to ride my road bike into work. Looks like daddy is the fool now. The pavement ended up being good, but I was catching snow almost the entire ride until I got into La Grande where it was completely sunny. I enjoyed my post-race recovery day with a 3 part workout: 1 hour ride to work, lower body workout including some 405 lb squats, 2 hour ride home with some short interval work.