The season is getting closer...

Well, finally, the racing season is at hand. After a lackluster winter where I totally missed my goals on training, I'm finding that I feel like I'm going fairly well. I was able to do a high rpm low gear ride for 3 hours on the road and even climb some of the hills at a reasonable clip for this time of year. After a quick cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun, I pulled the mtb out for a couple hours at Baker's Ridge. The group again was small, but because of that, the stragglers weren't holding us back and we kept up a steady hard pace for almost a couple hours. After an effort like that, I was expecting to feel totally wrecked today, but I got up and aside from feeling a bit stiff, I'm not feeling that bad. With the first race coming up in a week, I feel like I'm just about ready for the season. This weekend's race will be interesting because it will be the first time that I'll be racing against mtb riders at my level where the race is a single speed race. I've competed against the vets fields in the WVMBA series but had my single speed versus their gears. Usually that puts me a minute or two down right from the gun. I can make it back through and on some of the days, even hit the podium or close to it, but it is really tough. The real MTBers can tell I'm a cross rider since I'm likely to hop off the bike and run with it a bit to get over some of the tougher sections. I usually look at it as being able to get through it faster rather than not having the real skills. All I can say is that it'll be interesting to see where I stack up against the others when we're racing the same type of bike.