Well, Ryan took off Saturday morning for the Tuscaloosa race. I rode with the small group from Trinity and we ended up cutting the ride a little short because we got drenched in the rain, and the wind was getting fierce (like, not uncomfortable fierce… more like “blowing you off the road” fierce). We still ended up riding about 50 miles. When I got home, I cleaned up, ate some lunch, and chilled out for a bit.
After luch digested a bit, I changed and headed back out- this time on foot. I ran (ok, jogged slowly) down the rail trail to Shelby Farms where I made a muddy lap of the Tour de Wolf trail before running home. According to mapmyride.com, it’s’ exactly 3 miles from my house to TdW, and the trail is 6 miles… 12 miles! I was pretty sore by the time I got home, but felt alright otherwise. This is my longest run of the year, and, considering it was also my 4th one of the year, I’d say it was pretty good, albeit pretty slow as well.
The weather got pretty gross overnight. The wind slowed to a “calm” 15mph, but the temps dropped into the low 40’s. The sun rose behind a solid blanket of clouds. Yuck! Nevertheless, I bundled up and headed to Outdoors Inc on Union to meet up with the 9:00 group. I enjoyed riding straight into the headwind the entire way- most of the time doing around 200 watts and only going 15 or so mph. With a lot of people gone to Tuscaloosa for the weekend, it was a small group. I was miserably cold, and my legs felt like they were filled with rocks from the rail trail the day before. Luckily, Henry and Dennis were also beat from battling with the wind yesterday and decided to ride about half way to the normal turnaround before heading back. I went for it- even after a nice hard pull down Mud Island, I still hadn’t warmed up (my hands had actually lost more feeling). On the way home, we took an alternate route up Central instead of Union. It was pretty cool to see some of the large, old midtown houses and boulevards.
Oddly enough, I’ve felt really strong on the bike this weekend. I happened to take a second look at the Tuscaloosa race flyer last night- I’d forgotten that they were paying the top spots of P1/2/3 women out the same as P/1/2 men. I probably could have made a little money. Oh well. I have had a good weekend otherwise. The break from worrying about racing is pretty relaxing, and I’m having more fun on my bike now than I have in a while.
Next race I do will be Ride to Live on April 11th- it’s on the Barbour Motorsports Park track, which is a freaking BLAST to ride on. It’s also nice because it can be made into a day trip… gotta keep saving up for that mountain bike!