It's that time again!

I'm heading off to my first race of the year in the morning. And all day today I've been getting ready in the best ways I know how. First off if you want to go fast everybody knows you've got to have a shinny bike. So I figure if a shinny bike is fast, mirror polished ought to be down right untouchable....

Unfortunately I couldn't get the digital camera to show it's truly obscene beauty, but for a good feel for what it looks like at it's best notice the reflection of the pedal on the downtube in the pic. After a really good polish job my bike goes from being silver to being so mirrored that it really doesn't have a color, it just reflects everything around it. I know what you're thinking and don't get me wrong, yes this level of shine does involve a huge waste of time, in fact almost a full year's worth. This is what happens when someone who's a nut about bikes spends a year mostly off his bike but not necessarily away from his bike. I ended many weeks realizing that I had spent more time wet-sanding and polishing my bike than I had spent riding it.

The next preparation for race day also has spent a long time in the making...

I think most every non-bike racer has questioned the leg shaving thing at least once. There's lots of reasons we give: faster healing of road rash, more aero, better for massages, ect. But I have to admit my biggest reason is probably mental. When my legs are hairy, to me they look and feel like these scrawny dangling appendages hanging from the lower part of my body, but when they're shaved they seem more like purpose built machines, they're not scrawny, they're light weight and efficient.

As for the actual race, I'm just going to show up and see what happens. I've done this race several times and it's always been a pretty big disappointment. This year might be different though. I've trained with a lot more focus and dedication than I ever did before, but it's still very early in the season and a long way off when I'm shooting to be in top form.

Probably the biggest difference I've noticed about getting ready to race this year has been my dreams. In all my years of bike racing, before this year I never once had a dream where I won a bike race. I had a whole series of them where I would show up missing most of my gear and be totally panicked and would miss the start, but this year was the first time I ever dreamed about a race going well and even winning it. I'm not at all predicting a win for myself anytime soon, but I'm sure that that's at least a sign that my mind and body might finlay be up to the task of racing with the big boys in the group that gets to toe the start line last.

I woulda, but...

After starting the week terrible with being sick and not being able to ride I thought I could at least finish it off with a nice ride. I had a great loop planned down into Arbon Valley with a bit of meandering thrown in. The weather forcast was the same as for the last several days and they all tuned out nice so I figured that wouldn't be a problem...

At about 9:00am I looked out and saw:

I wasn't too stressed, I just figured I'd wait for it to warm up a bit and ride in the afternoon. So Kayla did her Saturday run before my ride and a little while after she got home it looked a bit like this :(

After a good dose of cursing Pocatello winters I eventualy dried my tears and slinked away into the basement to ride the rollers. The only ray of sunshine was that I at least had the re-runs of the '08 Tour of California to watch as I pedaled away without moving.

Here's what it looked like outside when I finished:The cycling club here planned to start the weekly Tuesday night rides this week but I'm not sure the roads will be ready in time for that. But I do have my fingers crossed for the impromptu TT we have planned for Thursday night. I just need to get some new cables to string-up my TT bike and I should be ready to rock. Speaking of that, the Boise crowed kicked off the season this weekend with a TT that I skipped. It was a long way to go for such a short race and even if by some freak chance I did get lucky and do well in that race all that would have done is make me a marked man for the other races in the series. My racing starts in 2 weeks with the Slammer, which will have to both check my form and get me back into racing mode (not sure how my nerves will handle coming back from a year off).

Suffering on the bike sure beats suffering off the bike

Last weekend I got to go to Boise to pick up Kayla and Susie after their little vacation. It sure was nice to have them back after a week and a half of solitude back home.

While in Boise I decided to take another shot at getting together with some of my old chums for a good hard ride. The ride was great, humbling in many aspects but great overall. We cruised out for a nice little Emmett-Horseshoe Bend loop (about 80 miles with a couple tough spots). I hung in well for the majority of the day, but the two times that everybod realy turned the screws I got dropped. When I rolled back to the car in Boise I felt like I still had several more miles in my legs but just an inability to realy ride hard like I'll need to do very soon. In the days afterwards I browsed the blogs of some of the other rides in the group and felt better that they refered to it as a tough ride. When you think about it, if I'm gonna get my butt handed to me on a ride at least I can feel good knowing that it was done by what was for sure the strongest group riding in the state that day.

This past week has been an easy one on my training callender, that was suposed to be getting me ready to start another hard few weeks. But Friday night Susie woke up throwing-up a bunch. She toughed it out really well and was mostly better by Saturday night. Then Sunday evening whatever it was that Susie had hit both Kayla and I realy hard. We couldn't keep anything in our systems and spent 10-12 hours whimpering and taking turns running to the bathroom. I don't think I've ever been so sick and for such a short period of time, by Monday morning we were both feeling well enough to start eating again (gently though). I had been planing on losing a few pounds as the racing season progressed, but wow, I hit my target racing weight in a matter of hours on Sunday.