The morning of...

I've never done a blog post on 'the morning of' a race, but it seems that I might have something more interesting to say with my nerves being a jumbled mess.

Last week's race in Meriden, CT at the motorcycle club was The Wrath of the Boneyard.  It is one of my favorites.  I love the course because of its bony rocky nature, and I think that might be a deterrent for some people.  Personally, the more technical the course, the more fun I'm going to have; so bring it.

With no other pro/open racers, I lined up with the rest of the Cat 1 women and raced the same number of laps as them.  We started off fast; I set the pace hard to get myself a good lead before settling into a rhythm.  That's not usually my style, but I've learned to no let others get in my way when there's a chance the course might be technical.  It's the climbs that I seemed to fail at.  For the first few laps, Sue Lynch and I were back and forth, but when she finally passed me on one climb, that was the last I saw of her.  She got about a minute's lead on me, and that's where we finished.  We were also at least eighteen minutes ahead of the rest of the pack.

It was honestly a fantastic race.  Sue and I have been back and forth all season with our times being around the same.  The only time I ever seem to gain anything on her is when there are techy downhills involved.

I raced the 666 TT again this week too.   Despite fumbling through the very first tech section and not really feeling like I wanted to race, I managed to get into my zone and had a really fast and flowy run (flowy for a rocky wasteland of tech).  Week one's time was 44:54 (I think), week two was 44:24 (or around there), and this week I finally broke 44 and pulled out a 43:53.  I'm only doing one more week of this, even though it's a complete blast.   I need to chill out at the local shop ride a couple times before school starts again, and even though the TT is a barrel of laughs, I need to get away from 'racing' for a bit before the NH100 arrives (3 weeks from today... crap).

This week I am off on Wednesday, and I'm planning an enduro type of ride around the Arcadia/Pachaug areas.  I need a solid 6-8 hours on my bike, and it sounds like I'll have a couple of buddies to do it with.

I'm off to Winsted this morning with my number one fan.  She's all fired up for the kid's race, so at least one of us is in race mode.  Winsted Woods has been a slippery mess the past few times I've raced there, so this won't be anything new. I'm actually looking forward to the challenge of slimy rocks and roots rather than the loose sandy corners we've been seeing most of the season.  Here's hoping for a safe and fast race today...