Lately I have been focusing a lot more of my training since school is out for Christmas and New Years. I don't have to deal with all the homework all my advanced classes pile on me and I can just go ride and do other things I actually enjoy. Cyclocross Nationals are coming up and my coach Adam Mills with Source Endurance has been helping me ramp my training. Normally I can do a lot of my intervals pretty easily but they have been getting harder, basically put- Pain Cave. All this hard work is starting to pay off though.
Grote Prijs Shawnee
Wednesday December 28th, 2011
So my dad recently talked to my coach and he said that he should watch how I race because I should be pretty much peaked for this race. I did all my normal things to get ready but as the night wore on the temp. dropped more and more. I realized early on that since this was a night race even though it was 50 degrees it was not going to feel that warm without the sun.
Around 3/4 of an hour til my race the temp had dropped to around 35 and was still getting colder. I watched my sister start her race then ran back to the car to put on leg warmers and start my warm-up.
Normally I do a pretty long warm-up, 20-35 minutes, because I have slow twitch muscles and do better in endurance events so I need a long warm-up for a short race. I got my timing a little bit off and ended up doing almost a 50 minute warm-up, 10 of that with my teammate who apparently thought it would be cool to try and rip my legs off right before my race.
I line up with one of the Jr. guys, Isaac Jonas, and we agree to try and work together. We start the race on a road hill and we immediately get next to each other and he falls back onto my wheel. It doesn't take long for the front group to pull away and we sit into the chase group with me on the front.
Isaac pulls away from me about half way into the race but has a mechanical and I pull him back in and we ride together with the same people. One of the single speed guys comes around me and yells at the guys behind me to get off my wheel because they are wimps for riding on a girls wheel the whole race.
On the last lap we started to pull away from the chase group and it was just Isaac and I trying to pull people back in. We went back and forth a couple of times. He came around me on the road but on the back section I took a corner sharper and pushed him up into the fencing and I stayed in front of him up until the barriers.
We came to the barriers neck to neck and came around the last corner the same way. Both of us all out sprinted but he beat me at the line. I finished 13 out of 26 in the men's 3/4 race which is extremely good considering I can barely finish 3rd from last most of the time. I feel peaked and my bike is set and ready to rock.
I have been sick with a cold all week but I feel better today and have been doing everything to get better fast. Lots of vitamin C and water!
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