Monday, March 10, 2008

Fitness at hand?

Yesterday was the regular Sunday Morgantown mountain bike ride. It is seemingly getting easier. I think the pace was a definitely slower than the week before, but I wasn't even stretched any. My biggest problem is I need to take up the tension on the chain. I had to pop it back on about 6 times. That was pretty much the only reason I dropped back any. I did dump it once and was the stopping point for a bit of a stackup on a wicked decent. I had a couple riders toppled into me but amazingly, we all kept upright. Halfway down, we got the call to stop since Betsy took a nasty spill at the bottom. She apparently buggered herself up some since she bailed on the ride shortly thereafter. Hopefully she's ok. Reportedly she was, but she rode straight home but had one of the other girls let us know that she was fine and not to worry. I'm guessing she'll be feeling it tomorrow. Gunnar will probably be in a bit late to work after riding her into work and their kids are probably all worried. On a couple of the road rides I did this past week, I'd done ok on some climbs and was able to stay in the saddle for them and even kept the pace up. I really do have to get a new chain. I've been riding the one on this bike for a bit longer than I like to. It's time to make the yearly order for the 5 or 6 chains I'll go thru this year. I also really do need to get a 25 or 26 for my smallest cog. Even though I'm making it up the climbs, I'm just feeling that it's a bit early for trying to do the He-man thing and muscling it up. I haven't really started doing any specialized workouts. I've found that starting those too early makes the season really long and it usually takes my first ass kicking to get me to start thinking about what I have to do to get competitive. I'm really aiming to repeat the WV 40+ series title I had gotten last year. I'd won 3 of the 5 individual events as well as the overall at the Mountaineer stage race. This year, they're even supposed to have leaders jerseys which will be cool. A bit of a budget crunch on their part stopped that for last year, but I can deal with something like that to help get a good series started where I don't have to drive for hours to get to the race. I guess I'm getting lazy in my old age. It's that or I'm saving the driving batteries for cross season. One of the other big goals for this year will be my defense of the prestigious Black Bear Derby. I gave Gunnar, F**kerman, and Mike Yozell a kicking in that race. I aim to rub it in as much as possible. Beyond that, the WVMBA series starts up soon. I did ok in my category last year and considering I really didn't have a clue as to what I was doing on a mountain bike, it was a good overall result. I'll probably have done around 14 mountain bike races this year so it'll be a lifetime high in that category. I've been finding it much more fun compared to the Wednesday night crits in Pittsburgh. Since we've had the oval, far too many people think they are A category riders because they can sit in the pack and get pulled along. Plus, with the team thing there, it's gotten more like high school with all of the little cliques that have formed up in the last few years. Rather than just having a fun race, it's become FAR to serious with some of the teams acting like they are pros. I know pro riders that aren't as uptight as these guys are. I guess you get all types though. Myself, I like to race hard, but having fun and being safe about it ranks just a wee bit higher than the 'where is the team and our riders ranked?' that seems to prevail in our formerly friendly ACA club in Pittsburgh lately.

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