Cancelled Koppenburg

It snowed last night. 

Here’s a message from the boulderracing.com website.

UPDATE – After inclimate weather which created unsafe riding conditions, the decision was made to postpone the race to a later date. We are looking at next Sunday, April 6th or April 20th. Bare with us as we’ve never canceled a race in our eight year history.

I wish that I’d checked the website. 

This morning, I grabbed all my warm clothes, packed the car, and drove over to the course.  It didn’t occur to me that they’d cancel.  I’ve raced in worse.  When I didn’t see anyone, I drove part of the course looking for some information, which I didn’t find.

Anyway, the course didn’t look bad to me.  But, I didn’t drive over to the hill, which could have been un-ridable.  But I was thinking ahead — so proud of myself.  I’d taken the pedals off my mountain bike and grabbed my mountain-bike shoes.  I figured I may end up running the hill this morning.

Oh well, that’s life. 

So I did a long, tedious workout in the garage instead.  I just completed three hours of intervals and steady state work.  I’m exhausted.  (I’m so glad that the weather will start getting nice.  I don’t want to see my garage for a long, long time. :-))

I’m going to look for some group rides as soon as I finish this post.  I don’t know where my fitness is, and I was hoping to find out today.  I need a measuring stick — but I’m afraid of what I’ll learn.  I think my goal of 2:05 on Mount Evans is a lost cause, but… just like everything else in my life I’ll just keep on moving.

I’m back… and I Race this Weekend

Well, I’m back – back from my travel (for a couple of weeks now).  And I’m back from my long absence to this blog. 

Somewhere in my travel I lost my motivation and need to find it again.  I don’t know how I will do this.  Any suggestions?

People who know me know I’ve been battling some pretty severe depression.  It’s frustrating.  I know I’m depressed; I know it does me no good.  But I can’t seem to kick the funk.  Because of it, I just haven’t trained well, haven’t posted to this blog, or done much else, but work.  But I digress.

That said, I guess I haven’t lost all motivation.  I’m tackling the Koppenburg Circuit Race on Sunday.

The race is six laps on a 5.5 mile course.  The course has a 2.5 mile dirt section that includes a nasty 200 meter, 17% climb with ruts, loose rock, etc.  

Here’s a picture of the climb from the boulderracing.com website.

 

I raced Koppenburg in 2004 and placed 29th of 66 in the CAT3 group.  This is an extremely technical race… not my kind of race, so I was pleased with 29th.

This year, I’m racing the 35+ group.  This group is typically the second fastest of the day - a lot of the older pro-1-2 racers jump in this group.  But even though it’s fast, the group is smooth and competent.  This lets me relax – not worry so much about the other riders – so I can hammer. 

Regardless, it should be a lot of fun.  The weather is supposed to be a rain/snow mix in the 40s. 

Good stuff!

Starting Week Three

I’m just starting week three of travel. 

This is my last week, and I don’t know if I will make it without losing my patience.  Some people like travel, some people don’t mind travel — me, I HATE travel.  It is very hard for me to stay focused and work hard when I’m so unhappy.  But, I’ll do the best I can do.

I’ll be interested to see where I am – mentally and physically – at the end of this week and how I’ll handle next week being back in Colorado.

My workouts over the weekend were actually very good.  I have a sample workout DVD from Carmichael Training Systems that I received in the mail about a year ago.  The DVD goes through a 32 min. workout that’s surprisingly hard. 

I did the workout on Saturday and then another hour of extended endurance.   It was hard, but not too hard.  So, Sunday I did the workout twice in 2 hours.  That was a nice hard workout — not my hardest, but it’s a good one for more extended efforts. 

That said, doing both of those workouts, I now know I’ve lost some fitness, but I think it will come back OK.  I just have to get in a few workouts this week and then get back in the rhythm next week.