Blur

I took a pretty big break from racing this summer.  A whole month.  As relaxing as it sounds, it was actually fairly stressful.  However, all the stress came to an end on June 16th.  After over a year of build up, Calli and I were married in Waunakee.  The ceremony, reception and pretty much everything about it went off really well.  The day we had planned for, for more than a year, was here and gone.

One of the more random parts of the day was during photos.  Teammate, and Waunakee resident, Dirk happened to ride by while we were having pictures taken.  We were at the covered bridge off of Brookside Lane when a few riders were looking to come through.  We stepped out of the way and sure enough, Dirk rolls by!  The photographers had us pretty busy, but he stopped quick to say hi.  Just another great part of our awesome day.

After the month away from racing, I knew that racing at TOAD was going to be a challenge.  I went to Waukesha for the first Sunday of TOAD.  I should have known better, but I didn't get there early enough to take a lap a race or two prior to mine.  I thought it would be no big deal to take a lap prior to the start of my race, especially on a course I had never raced before.  After riding the course, I rolled up to the start line in about the 10th row.  Not good.  As the race started, I was hanging in the pack but finding it hard to move up.  Lots of corners, a big bunch, and some Cat 2s in the mix with the Cat 3s didn't leave much room to move up.  I made a couple of big efforts to try and get to the front, as the acceleration in the pack were starting to take their toll.  However, with about 8 laps left, I just couldn't hang on anymore.  It could have been the hot day, the faster pace, the tough course, the slight hangover, or any combination of those.  I'm sure the month without any real hard efforts didn't do me much good either.

I skipped doing any of the mid-week races (saving some vacation days for a honeymoon later this year).  A wedding on the day of Downer's was not exactly how I wanted to be spending that Saturday, but it was fun.  I was pretty motivated to finish Madison.  I got a second row starting spot and was able to hang towards the front of the pack most race.  Again it was a very fast pace, but I could carry speed through the corners and maintain a position towards the front quarter of the bunch.  I was able to avoid a last lap crash and come in for 24th, a slight improvement on last year's finish.  Not great, but all things considered, I was happy with it.

Getting the fat tires out this weekend for the first MTB race of the season.  Good luck to all of those headed to state crits!