First Race of the Year

Sunday, Steve and I were up in Plainwell, MI for a nice MTB TT at Yankee Springs. Luckily, I wasn't expecting much from myself because of my new training plan. I have not done really intensity work yet this year so I can build a proper base in order to not die in the fall.

So, I felt good, but not fast. First of all, they started us every ten seconds, which is absurd for an Elite TT, but whatever. I got passed in the first couple miles by my ten second guy. Then my 20 second guy came, then 30 second guy, and so on. I got passed by a lot of people.

I ended up getting 22nd out 27. Pretty bad but oh well. I was ten minutes down on the leader. It just means I have plenty of work to do before Boyne next month.

But the real reason I did the race can be seen below...
Got the free pint glass!

March

Eh.

That's kind of what March was to me. There was some good riding, but there was also some boring riding. I was able to get out on the trails once in March, so that was nice, but all the road riding is starting to get to me.

Overall, I logged 38 hours and 564 miles over March. Fairly respectable. Not awesome.

I did the two home races (circuit and ITT), but it was more just for fun. I know everyone says that, but for those of you who know me, my legs were not shaven, so that will tell you how serious I was about the race.

Right now, with snow on the ground, the trails will be another week or so before they are rideable again, so I have a little more drudging to do on the road bike to be ready for Yankee Springs in a week and a half.

Road Racing?

Yesterday I hosted my 10th and 11th races as the Michigan Cycling president. I wasn't planning on participating in either because the weather outlook was actually pretty bad. I ended up doing both.

Many people were surprised to see me in a road bike race, especially after I had told everyone I wasn't racing, but I actually had fun. The weather turned out to be pretty nice for the circuit race and there were only 16 B racers, so I didn't feel like there was a great amount of danger in giving it a go. For this race I just stayed with the pack the whole time, until the end when all the accelerations came. MTBing doesn't have those accelerations except at the beginning, so I have never been able to hold on to those, so I ended up getting 12th.
For the TT, it started drizzling, but it wasn't so bad, so I decided to do this as well. I ended up being the last rider to go out, and about halfway through, it really started pouring. It was very fun though. Because of the rain and because my TT bike doesn't have real brakes, I took the really steep downhill way too slow, which cost me a bit of time. I ended up getting second, though, by 13 seconds. I am pretty happy with that, and I still think I am right about on schedule for my training plan.

Next race is on real bikes on April 19th at Yankee Springs. Should be nice and demoralizing, as I will be making my Elite debut (again).

Heading to Montana for the Weekend

Tomorrow I leave for Montana for the weekend for grad school interviews. My weekend is going to be packed with meetings with professors and tours and such. Saturday we are going to spend the day at yellowstone. Unfortunately, the packed schedule leaves no time for riding out there. Maybe later.

I probably won't have much access to a computer but if you actually care what I am doing, you can check it out at http://twitter.com/NickWBB.

Spring Break

So I guess this post is kind of mandatory. But I think it will be a bit of twist on the normal. Because yes, we rode more than 250 miles in the week, climbed mountains until it hurt to walk, and did six gap century and climbed Brasstown Bald, but we also actually had fun, so I am going to write about that.

First off, we did NOT get to go to Brother's Restaurant after our drive all through the night because they didn't open until 11 am this year, so we went to Waffle House instead. It was not good. Brother's really let us down...at least I thought so. Everyone else seemed to be smiling (at least fake smiling).On Sunday, we rode to Graham's cottage about 20 miles away where his parents had a BBQ for us. The cake they had for desert was absolutely amazing. On Monday, after the century, we ate at the local Mexican restaurant in Helen (La Cabana). I decided to have a nice [big] Margarita for my hard work of the day.

The rest of the week was filled with lots of riding, playing Rock Band, team meetings where every word I said was sarcastically analyzed by the whole team (especially by Mattison and Ken), and haircuts for some members of the team (Sean and his rat-tail, Cory and his way too short hair, and Mattison and his mullet). On Wednesday, we made our way down to Helen to check out the rock shops. We found a bar and all enjoyed a nice pint of local Hef-Weizen (some had other beers and of course Zachariah had his gluten free frou-frou drink).

Thursday some people went to Atlanta to check out the Aquarium, I decided to go hiking with a couple other guys, which was a very nice change from the norm (not riding)- though my legs didn't like it as much after climbing to the highest point in GA the day before.
Those of us that didn't go to Atlanta visited Cleveland that night for our yearly dinner at Ma Gooch's. I have a picture of the place just in case you don't believe it is it's actual name. That was some good country cookin'. I even tried some fried Okra with my Fried Chicken and they were absolutely amazing. I felt like a Country Boy.The drive back was pretty fun, too. We stopped at UNO for lunch and had a waiter that admitted to having too many Red Bulls and actually told Josh multiple times that he looks like a serial killer. I tried the UNO amber ale, which actually paired so well with the pizza I had that I am pretty sure it is the best food and beer pairing I have ever had...perhaps even better than at Grizzly Peak.

Twitter

You can check out my Twitter at http://twitter.com/NickWBB.

This website allows me to update what I am doing through texting.

Now I can write about myself even more.

It is actually a fun website to follow what other people are doing. You can follow me, and I would follow you too.

That is all for now, most of my updating this week is done on Twitter since internet is spotty in Bavarian Helen.

It doesn't get much colder than this...

So on Wednesday it was really sunny out, and I was able to convince Chris to ride with me. It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit air temperature and close to o degree wind chill.

Needless to say, it was really cold. I was actually so uncomfortable that I started riding harder just so I could get home faster. When I got home, I got a look of my reflection in the door. It looked a little something like this...Pretty intense, I know. It is kind of like those mountain climbing guys on the Discovery Channel. And by the way, this was the best I could do for a smile, my face was frozen and not very movable. Also by the way, I shaved so that this won't happen again anytime soon, because it is kinda gross.

Now, today it is 40 degrees Fahrenheit and it feels like summer. No matter what Punxsutawney Phil says, I think spring is coming soon. And if not, at least it should be warm in GA in a couple weeks.