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.