Bakers Update

Reading back over my previous post, I can tell I wrote it while exhausted. So no one thinks I was less than enthusiastic about it, the Leesburg Bakers Dozen was a great race, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with the rest of the DCMTB/City Bikes team and racing around the course. It was fast, had enough log overs to make anyone happy, and had a few surprisingly technical spots. The parts through the pine trees were sweet. I think someone mentioned DCMTB/City Bikes had 18 riders in attendence.

Loren had a good race, turning in consistently fast lap times, and Mike had some fast laps too, even without considering the broken collar bone. Without our mishaps (my botched first lap with the bent rim, Mike's crash and having to pull out of the race, my flat tire on one of my night laps), we would easily have been in the top ten. As it was, we pulled out 13th place out of 48 teams.

Having raced for five hours and enduring two days of feeling like warmed over death does have it's advantages. After a full three days of recovery, and I needed every one of them, I went out this afternoon for a training ride through my normal route along the long rolling hills to Westminster and back. 32 miles, 1 hour and 34 minutes, 20.3 mph avg. Faster than the last time I rode it by 0.8 mph, and not far off my fastest average of 20.5 mph. I had to work hard for it though. I put out a very big effort today, which will hopefully pay off on Sunday. My left leg felt weak again -- I'm not sure what that's about, but I'm hoping it gets better, as I was having to put a lot of concentration into working through it, leaving less for other tasks.

With Mike's broken collar bone, he reminded me that he won't be able to race Lodi with me and Steve Viers. That's the second teammate we've lost. If we can find another before the race in two weeks, I hope we can keep him healthy enough to at least start with us. Maybe we can cryogenically freeze him and thaw him out just before the race, like Han Solo.