Labor Day Weekend

My labor day weekend couldn't have gone much better than it did. I did have to work on Sat. night and at the shop Sunday afternoon but other than that I spent the rest of the time with the family or on the bike.

On Saturday morning I decided to sleep in a bit and went for an extended ride in town through wilderness park. I spent a solid 2 hours in the saddle pushing a race pace most of the time. I was surprised that I didn't see any other riders out there though.

Sunday morning I was up early and headed out to Branched Oak to hit my favorite singletrack in the area. I decided to ride area 1 where we usually race but won't be in a couple of weeks. I did put in some real good laps other than the first which always sucks cause it is what I call the spider lap. The spiders there love to put up their webs across the trail. I always end up stopping a lot to clean the webs off my glasses, face and arms. Once in a while you have to clean off the spider that's crawling on you too. After that is done the rest of the laps are great and I always feel like I get a lot more accomplished training wise on the more challenging climbing course.

Today I went out again to Branched Oak and first hit the spider lap up alone and then met up with Ryan and we headed over to area 7 where the race will be held on the 13th to meet up with Millhouse and do some course recon. We rode the course twice. The first lap Millhouse led the way and I realized the course wasn't as bad as I thought. It is a new trail right next to the old rutted out one. On the second lap I lead us out and pushed up to my race pace which I wasn't able to hold over the entire 2.9 mile course. I cracked about 2/3rds the way through. I'm not sure what was up and after that I felt pretty weak the rest of the day. I didn't really eat anything before I rode this morning cause I was a bit tired and just forgot. I'm not sure if that is what it was or I just haven't been getting the rest I need. The course is shorter than the rest of the race courses so it will be a bit different doing more laps instead of the standard 3. After that Ryan and I head back to ride area 1 again and I still didn't have much in the legs and Ryan was having trouble with his drivetrain so the loop wasn't the best but bad singletrack is better than none. After that I needed to get going cause I thought the wife and I were going to go get a new laptop in Omaha but the store we were going to go to was closed for Labor day. So the rest of the day was spent lounging around the house catching up on some reading.

The only gripe for the weekend is what should have been. A few weeks back I decided I wanted to race the Dakota 5-0 in Spearfish South Dakota. I wasn't able to do it cause of some family stuff I was supposed to do. The family stuff ended not happening and I really wish I had gone to the race but by the time I found out it was to late to get everything organized so that I could be gone for the weekend. I did keep thinking about it yesterday as I rode that I should be racing instead of just out training. Next year it will definetly be on the schedule especially after reading a race report from it.

The plan for tomorrow is to head out to the pcl Tuesday night crits and get my ass kicked. I figured this will get me into the road bike mind set since I'm going to do a road race this coming weekend. Should be good training to get me ready for my last 2 mountain bike races of the season.

Harp