My blog chronicling my journey to earn my pro mountain bike license. Also talking about things from the bike shop and stuff that I think is interesting or cool.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

First Race Back

Yesterday I rode at Renaissance for about a half hour to make sure my ankle could handle mountain biking and to get at least a little comfortable on mountain bike.  My ankle held up well, no noticable pain.  Bike handling was pretty good, given the lay off, could tell my fitness was way off:  my heart rate was really high given how hard I was going and I was out of breath, something that rarely happens unless I'm racing.  As a result of it going well, I felt comfortable doing the race this morning.

Showed up pretty close to the start of the race, I wasn't going to warm up very much, because with my lack of fitness I didn't think the cost (being tired) was worth the benefit (being ready to go hard right from the start).  Unfortunately, at least in terms of points for the Summer Series, there were a bunch of experts there, so I wouldn't be able to get some cheap points from there not being many people in the race. 

At the start I took it very easy and very willingly settled into last place.  All the experts pulled away pretty quickly, I was committed to not going out too hard (and later blowing up).  I felt my bike handling was pretty good, and got better as the race progressed.  My fitness was clearly way off, which was clear with how quickly everyone pulled away, but I did what I could given my fitness. I was able to maintain a pretty even pace and while being pretty tired at the end, I felt like I got about as much out of my fitness as I could have.  Overall I was pretty happy, my fitness needs just needs to come back, which much of it will come back quickly, the last 10% of my fitness will take quite a bit longer.

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