The Traveling Starts

So this weekend will be the first that I'm on the road. The Georgia Cup cycling series starts this weekend with the "Seige of Rome" weekend. The time trial is suited for me a bit, so I shouldn't get last at least. The crit seems like something I might do decent in, with the course being fairly flat. The road race, on the other hand, is quite nasty. I'll post the profile below so you can fully appreciate what I mean. For a professional race, it's not very long at just 52 miles. What does make it quite nasty, however, is the little 3 mile climb to the finish. This weekend will be the first real "test" of how well I can manage to play it smart with what I have. The past few weekends have been me acting a bit stupid when it comes to chasing breaks and such, but I can't afford to do that this weekend. I need a solid performance in the first two races, with the third being very tactical as to not allow myself to get dropped on the first climb. Click the "view elevation" button to see the course profile in another window.

Nasty Sickness

I had originally planned on blogging Friday about the upcoming weekend I had planned and such, but that didn't seem to come to fruition. Tuesday night Aaron got pretty sick, and it was confirmed by the doctor Wednesday that it was, in fact, the stomach virus. Of course the entire family had to come to make sure he was doing fine, which was a huge mistake. The entire family ended up coming down with it, except my grandfather and Hope's dad. I didn't come down with it until Friday, but it hit me pretty hard when I got it, which messed with my race preparations for the weekend.

I raced yesterday, but it wasn't anything amazing. I went to the back after a couple laps of trying to chase a break, and finally got dropped with 11 laps to go in the race. Before the race I parked next to a "no parking" area so I could lay my rollers out in that area and warm up with no disturbance from other vehicles. Of course, so idiot in a Range Rover just had to drive through the area without looking, and drove over my rollers that I got for Christmas! The damage was decent, but not too bad upon further examination today. Also, the guy gave me his trainer, which was a nice gesture. Although, it would have been nicer to get the money to fix my rollers!

Tough Race!

So I did race #3 for the season this weekend. The race was on Saturday, and was in Dacula, GA. As is the case with races that occur in bad conditions, only the serious racers (excluding me I guess) show up. There was an ex European pro among other actual pros. I got dropped 37 miles, or 1.5 hours into the race, but at that time my normalized average wattage was about 320 watts! To put that into perspective, the best output I had last season was in a local time trial where I put down 335 normalized watts for an average for 23 minutes. That means that I put out almost that many watts, but for about 4 times longer! Needless to say, even though I got dropped, I was still quite happy that my recent knee injury didn't hurt me as badly as I had originally thought!

Insult to Injury

Not all that insulting, but my threshold power has been affected a bit by my injury. I had a peak threshold of 320-ish last season, so I honestly would have expected at least that at this point. Due to my injury, however, I have dropped to about 305 according to my race data from this weekend and calculations. Whether or not that number will remain there for long remains to be seen. I plan to do all I can to get my training back together and improve myself to be better than ever. On a side note, I got dropped from my Sunday race, as with the wind and competitiveness of the field, it was just too much for me. Hopefully this Saturday will go a bit better.

Finally!

The season has officially started for me! My first 2009 Pro,1,2 race was today in Greenville SC. Although I didn't do anything by way of a top ten, I did FINISH my race, which is the first time I have officially finished a Pro,1,2 race with the pack. Here's the stats for the race:

Miles Ridden=58.29miles
Average Speed=25.6mph
Work=1725KJ
Avg Wattage=211
Norm Wattage=263
Avg Heart Rate=156
Avg Cadence=96
Total Time=2hrs 15min

The College Game

Okay, so there's still nothing really going in the world of jobs for me. There IS, however, something going on as far as a possible return to college. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) is a deal where if you're unemployed, you can get some financial aid from the government to alloy you to gain an education in a "needs" area. I have decided that I want to pursue this route, and have applied to a couple of colleges. Tomorrow morning I'm going to take a trip to the offices that handle the WIA claims in my area to get some serious information on what will be provided to me. I'll update once I get info!

yep

i'm still around....just not sure what to blog on...