I know that I have been ignoring this blog lately. I have been really busy and with it being the cycling off-season there really isn’t a whole lot going on to blog about. I had been riding every weekend since the end of the racing season and getting a few trainer rides in. This month has not been a good cycling month though. With all the rain and the holidays I haven’t had much time to ride.
I guess I can take the time to follow up with how I did on my goals for the year. My biggest goal was to finish a race. Obviously if you have read my blogs before this you know that I finished most of my races this year. I did 14 races at 13 different race weekends, and finished 8 of them. It took me 5 races to finally finish one and then I had a flat that ended my day at another. They weren’t all pretty but I finished and that was my goal. I did manage a couple of top 20 finishes.
As I am sitting here writing this I don’t really remember any of the good races. I mean I remember being in the race but there is nothing special about them except the good finish. I have a couple of good memories from the bad race, maybe not good memories but good learning experiences. I am not sure why I don’t really remember anything special from the good races but I will share what I remember from the race season.
The earliest learning or ah ha moment that I can remember happened at the Brea Old Course race. I hadn’t finished a race to this point and really had been ramping up my training. As we were rolling around the course before the race a guy stopped me and told me to ditch the frame pump, 2nd water bottle and tool bag. The race was 40 minutes long and I wouldn’t have to time to drink 2 waters or fix a flat. During that race I remember that I changed my strategy. The plan was to stay near the front as much as possible. I did that but eventually I was put out in front to pull everyone. I did my job pulling and as soon as I pulled off everyone attacked and I was dropped. At the end of the race the guy that told me to ditch the stuff told me to never work in a race. Let other people do it unless you are in a break. I had pulled since.
There were three races that really challenged my mental toughness. The first was San Luis Rey and its 7 miles of climbing per lap. I was dropped from the field about 2 miles into the climb and rode solo for the other 28 miles. I could have stopped, I wanted to stop, but I just kept pushing and finished the race. In Brentwood I was taken out in a crash. There was no way that I was going to catch up but I got back on the bike and finished. I was mad because I was doing so well in the race and then I was taken down. The final race would have to be Crossobter fest. I was not prepared, my bike was not prepared, and I probably shouldn’t have been out there. I didn’t let that or the 5 or 6 crashes prevent me from finishing. It was hard, it sucked, and I hated every minute of it but I finished. Even the announcer could tell that I hated life for that race but gave me props for not giving up.
I pretty much met my weight goals for this year. I have lost a lot of weight and have kept it off. I have changed a lot of bad eating habits and I continue to improve my diet all the time. I know that when I really get back into training hard I will shed even more weight. I am proud with the amount of weight that I lost and I know it will make a big difference this next season. I now weight less on my bike on race day than I did on May 15 of this year.
I competed in two other disciplines that use bicycles. I think completed is a better term since there was no chance that I was going to win anything. I finished a triathlon and under my projected time that I had set for myself. I also completed the cycle-cross race. That is something that I am not interested in doing again but it was cool to experience. I am planning on doing a longer triathlon next year but I don’t know when or where. Maybe someday I can try to finish a half Iron Man. That will be way in the future, but its nice to dream.
I killed my mileage goal for the year. I didn’t really start riding or tracking my mileage until March. I put on a lot of mileage over the summer months and especially when I started riding with the race team in Murrieta. I finished with around 1500 miles for the year. I missed my garmin on a couple of rides so I don’t have the exact numbers. I forgot to charge it so it missed about 100 miles. Right now I am exactly at 1300 miles on the garmin and I have not loaded it for about a month. I will post the total numbers when I get them. Next year my goal is to get over 2000 miles total.
My final cycling highlight is that I decided to join a race team. I am now a member of the CA Pools/Dewalt cycling team in Murrieta. They actually cover all of San Diego County and the southern part of Riverside County. I primarily train with the guys in the northern area but my try to make it to a few San Diego rides. We will see what the schedule is like and how things go with the new addition.
I think that the most special thing that I will experience next year is the birth of my second son. I am very excited and I got what I wanted. I wanted another boy but my wife wanted a girl. I hope that he loves sports as much as his big brother. I am looking forward to next season for Ethan as well. He really got into racing his bike at my races. I need to get him on the bike more now so that he is ready for the races coming up. He takes it so seriously and is the happiest person on the planet when he wins, but still needs to work on handling defeat.
Its going to be an exciting year. I will be kicking it off in Vegas. I thought about taking the bike with me so that I could get the year started right with a short ride. I think that Anne will kill me if I take it though so I will have to wait until the 2nd for my first ride of the year.
On a totally different note, I was oddly excited last night when talking to my brother from another mother Jacob. Jacob, Gerardo and myself have been riding pretty much every Sunday. Jacob even completed the triathlon with me even though he thought that he was going to die or be beat by a pregnant lady. Last night I was asking him about a pair of hand me down pedals and he told me that he liked them a lot and that he tested them on a short 10 mile ride.
I was excited that he used the word short with a 10 mile ride. There was a time when I started that I could have considered a long ride. I know that he suffers through some of the 30 mile rides but he is getting a lot better every ride. He wants to ride next season as well. I am going to try to train him some so that he can finish his first race.
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