Saturday, June 25th, 2005
On the way home from the state road race. It was a total waste of time for me. I thought I felt really good this morning with no sour after effects from the hard night at the track last Thursday night. Then the race started and I was dropped.
The start was on the one mile climb out of the Zumbro River valley. It was a controlled roll out and the race did not start until half way up the climb. Over the top of the climb I was totally dropped. How depressing…
I chased like a CMF and fought my way back into the pack. My legs hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt, things were not going well. I hoped that I just needed to warm up and as we approached the big climb for the second time I moved to the front for the ‘drift’.
The drift is what the old guys, fat guys or just plain bad climbers do in order to stay in the group. You start at the front of the pack and, during the course of the climb you slowly drift back though the pack so that, in theory, when you hit the top of the climb you may be at the back of the pack but you are not dropped.
I state in theory becuase the second time up the climb I had drifted to the back before the half way point. I made every effort to stay with the back of the field but some tough guy went to the front and drilled it so by the top of the climb I was once again off the back.
I rolled along and I actually tought I would get back on for a few minutes. But guy driving the follow car clearly did not think I would get back on and he went busting past me to catch back up to the pack. You have to dig deep into your special stock of motivation in order to get back in the pack once the follow car passes you up. Someone must have raided my special stock of motivation this morning because there was no way I was catching back onto the race. Oh well.
I made my choice to race the track and paid the price for it but what the hell. It was totally worth it. Except that it was a total waste of time…
(Sent wireless via Treo 600)
