Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Chasing the race

Redlands, CA
March 25, 2006

From some of my previous results I’ve decided that it’s probably a good idea to put some work into my time trialing. I know I can be good at it if I can figure out how it’s done. There aren’t too many fast people out there who consistently lose 2 minutes in a 5 kilometer race- I know I can put the effort out, I’ve just got to learn to gauge that effort so it's applied evenly across the duration of the race. Then I’ll be golden… maybe.
That was the prologue, which was yesterday, today was the criterium. I’m not sure who’s idea it was to shorten a previously ~6 day stage race to a race consisting of a prologue, criterium & circuit race over three days. They could theoretically hold this year’s whole race in one day. Hopefully they’ll change it back next year. As far as the race today went- it was the hardest criterium I’ve ever done. Usually the race’ll slow down, but it failed to do so today. It seemed like it was full throttle for the duration of the race. Tomorrow suits me better, so with any luck I’ll do well on the stage since the overall is kind of already taken.

posted by Tom Peterson @ 9:49 PM