The boys are back....

Well a whole winter's worth of training has been tested.... and proved to be worthwhile. We had our first O'Cup race on Sunday at Mansfield, and although the weather was perfect on Saturday.... it was far from perfect on Sunday.... 10 degrees, rain and wind. I also woke up with a sore throat that Luke decided to share with is daddy.... thanks bud. The trails at Mansfield always take the rain well, so there was on majoy wet spots but a lot of damp sand flying around. I didn't pre-ride (not worth spending 4hrs in the car) so I decided to take it easy on the first lap and let Rob Parniak ... who's always strong... lead it out. I know that Rob usually starts strong, so it was nice to have an escort through the trees. The lead group was dwindling after 1 lap, so i offered to lead for a while. Rob knows me well enough to realize that means "I'll lead for a little while with the throttle wide open".... so i got a bit of a gap and kept riding steadily. The course really suited me, with some nice tight singletrack, so good climbs and some really fast double track. I finished up with a gap of almost 2min, but there were still several Big Dogs that were missing from our group... so we'll see who shows up at Albion Hills. So now that the season has officially started... it's full speed ahead from here.... races around Ontario, a few in Quebec and even some in the US this year. Looking forward to it....

Teach an old dog.... old tricks

So i've been around racing for a lot of years... this will be 14... but i still make mistakes. I had a great week of training over march break, got lots of hours and was feeling really good on the bike. I decided to keep riding through my rest day, did some harder intervals and kept building hours hoping that the added load would make me even fitter. But then my body reminded me of that old saying "A rest day is just as important as a hard day".... so my body turned off for a day. I rode in to school on the Friday, felt horrible on the bike and for the whole morning, was sick at lunch and did nothing but sulk on the couch at nite. Some good sleep though and some good food had me feeling a lot better the next day, so it was much nicer to get my couple EASY hours on Saturday with Mark Batty who was home for a short visit. I'm not young anymore.... i need to remember that rest is crucial. So now i'm starting a few days of forced rest.... got "neutered" today so i'll be off the bike for a bit. But i actually think that the rest will be nice for my legs before starting it up with some hard stuff before the first race. Not something that you would see on many racer's blogs.... but i am a MASTER you know... Adam and Emily talk about their rides up Mount Lemmon.... i have other topics to share.... Just wanted to throw out a congrats to the crew down south at the NMBS races and heading to Sea Otter in a week or so. Great work at the start of a long season... i know you'll all do great at the next few races. I'll just hang out here with my bag of frozen peas....