Warming up the saddle

This weekend brought some home-town racing in Sheboygan and Calumet County, respectively.

Saturday's WCA crit in Sheboygan was the usual--60 minutes with all the locals. It came down to a field sprint, John Acker held off the field for first, while Dave Kay, Fresh, Mike Anderson, and Nagode scored 2-5th respectively. Gavic and I rolled in for 6th and 7th. The race felt good, the legs seemed okay, but I was missing that "jump" in the sprint.

Sunday, the Elgin Cycling Classic wasn't going to work out, so I decided to hit up WORS for some mtb action. I'll call it a tuneup before Chequamegon.

Within the first 10 minutes at the race, I already had seen 10 different friends. It's strange how I know almost everyone now at these WORS races...it's a good time. So before the race started, I managed to bend my derailleur hanger on the Giant pretty good. Luckily Dallas pulled through for me with a derailleur-hanger-bender-tooler-thinger right away. I never really got the thing fixed though--every time that I'd shift I'd get that "click-click-click" noise like my chain was skipping. But there was no time to fix the thing 100%, I could hear Don already screaming callups in the distance.

Consequently I had no warmup for the race. I forgot how much that hurts for mtb races... ouch! I grabbed a good position at the start of the race and cruised in the top ten for the leadout. After that, I pretty much figured out the legs didn't want to go 100%, so I let up a bit and had some more fun. At every corner on the course, I made some strange comment to the corner guard. I talked with Sarah Lucas and Dallas for a bit. I even screamed at my man Kyle Jacobsen ripping it up on his singlespeed. In the end, I didn't feel warmed up until the fourth lap--where I managed to make a beautiful spill for Rusty taking photos at the top of a climp. Classic. After settling in for the last lap, I ended up in 26th. Having no expectations, I was happy--it was a great time!

I guess I need to take a week or two here to "recover" from my "recovery" weeks, eh? Or maybe I should just crash more often to get myself amped up more for the race? I don't know...

Two weeks until I move into my new apartment in Madison--summer's almost over, and I couldn't be more excited to get a move on with my life. Keep it commin' this week---and look forward to a picture of me eating pavement thanks to Rusty later this week...