Back on it.

It's been two months since anything. So let's recap.

-I did one 10k skate race at Prospect in February. It hurt and I realized I have about 5% of the upper body strength I used to have.
-I probably did not do a workout over 1.5 hrs from September through March. While every other cat2 is out there sleeping in altitude tents and training 20+ hours every week, I think I have yet to do a 10hr week.
-I passed my A-exam (yes, not cycling related), which means I get to stay at Cornell until I get my PhD or they really get tired of me. That is half the reason I have been "lazy" about training. Such is life.

Two weeks ago I did the Army ECCC race, which consisted of a 80 minute circuit race and a hillclimb TT. A short race and a hillclimb- perfect. The circuit race was tactical brilliance on my part.

The key to establishing a potential break is to let all the good riders (Driscoll, Lipka, Frey, etc) go off the front, and then snap up the remaining placings when everyone else is too lazy to care (or won't chase their teammates).

There they go

For the first few laps, things were a little crazy as the big guys attacked and the mere mortals did their best to find their wheel. A lot of times, this included people sweeping across the road and hitting my front wheel. Thankfully I can ride my bike well enough to not have things like that crash me. Eventually the instigators broke everyone's spirit and cruised off. With about 4 laps to go, I jumped with Steve Pingree (Army) and Jose Soltren (MIT) and we got some room on the field. I kept yo-yo'ing on the downhill/flats and finally I was popped off the back when we hit the stretch of road with a 40mph headwind. That's ok, though, since Steve admitted he spent some time in Tucson training and that guy Jose is a diesel engine. Luckily we were far enough off the front (yet so far from the front) that I held on for 9th place. Ha!

Bridging up to the second break

The Sunday hillclimb was relatively uneventful, as TT's usually are. I watched some D riders take off like they were doing a downhill TT, only to pass them back a few hundred meters later during my warm-up. So my course reconnaissance alerted me to the fact that you can't go too hard. However, I didn't ride enough of the climb to actually know what was coming.

Then I rode up the hill and got 10th place. So that was pretty good too. I could tell it's been a while since I opened up my legs, though. I couldn't quite get them to hurt like I know they can. But I suppose that will come.

I just saw this announcement about the NJ State Fair Cross Spectacle (Spectacross). A run-up over a car? Where do I sign up? Also- apparently the race is sponsored by Erwin Vervecken Web Design.

"Erwin Vervecken is a three-time World Professional Cyclocross Champion and a member of the Revor Pro Cycling Team. Fluent in several languages, Erwin Vervecken has proven to be as talented in website design as he is on the cyclocross course."

After visiting his site cyclocross.be I'm fairly certain he is more talented on the cyclocross course. That said, I haven't done HTML since high school, so he's better than me. Or maybe I'm just not crazy about "Courier New" font like the Belgians. His other sites look better, though.