Racing in March?

Since this blog is suppose to be about bike racing and global warming I'm going to highlight the bike racing thing today. Why? Well, mostly cause the season has kicked-off here in Colorado and I actually raced. Today was the first race of the year, part of an early season series of road races (crits, which are multi lap races on a short course) up in Boulder.

I decided to race yesterday after putting in some hard efforts and feeling not terrible. I figured since the week would be light in terms of riding hours anyway I might as well get in hard work. Now one thing to keep in mind with this racing in March thing is, I'm a mountain biker not a road racer and today's kind of race is fast, not particularly suited for an endurance guy like me. I knew the hard work would be/will be good later in the year though. The strange thing with the first race of the year is not having any idea what you'll do. I came in to today with low expectations since I haven't done any intervals until this week, I had just come off 6 days off, and while in Mexico I gained a lot of weight (10 lbs). All these things had me expecting to get beat good, no chance of staying with the leaders, which on a course like this (in the past) has been a miracle. Somehow today though I rode good. Stayed with the lead group the entire time, attacked once just to test the field and was in the sprint for the win at the end. Now road racers and mountain bikers have different strengths and one area mountain bikers are weak is the sprint, so needless to say I didn't do good in the sprint, but man was it fun. Far more important than the results was the information I gained today: yes the work this winter is paying off, yes there is room to go (no intervals yet) and finally that racing is still fun ( I knew this though).

The first race is also good on a social level, a few of my mountain biking brethren were at the race, Steve and Rob racing and Och hanging out cheering. It was good to catch up for a few minutes after the race, knowing I'll be seeing these guys all summer.

Next stop, LA tomorrow for the day then back to Denver late tomorrow night. I'll try to write some on Global Warming as I've been reading a lot about issues recently, but until then, what have you done today?