tonight was the first true crit test. i drove to work then left earlier to make my way to the regatta centre. it turned out to be not that difficult but traffic was good tonight so that helped. i do need to leave a little earlier say 4:45 just to get there in time – warm up – etc. i always seem to be rushing around rather than relaxing and warming up beforehand.
the girl wasn’t in a good condition. she was filthy and the creak in the pedal/bb what fucken ever it is – is doing my head in big time. it has to be fixed asap. i will test on the weekend to see if it the pedal or the BB.
again C-Grade and i was actually last on the line. there wasn’t a lot of riders either. with the 2 weeks lead in i hadn’t really ridden at all and i new from the get go it was going to be a hard task to finish in a place.
we rolled out and i was pretty much all over the joint. i had no real solid plan for the race so i just basically pinned it for the entire ride. pretty dumb looking back at it all now due to my current fitness level with lack of riding in the weeks leading up.
on the first back straight i went straight out to the front and dragged everyone with me. i was like a man possessed tonight and did the same thing 3 times. eventually i pretty much dragged the entire C-Grade peleton up and past B-Grade which was silly and very amateur riding thinking back. they were a bit stunned the B-Graders and within 1/4 of a lap had all passed us back although we did remain within this distance for the remainder of the race.
i pushed too hard and realised how much on the second last lap when i attempted to do a rest period to recover. neither happened – i did stay back but rest only comes if you can recover and i couldn’t do either.
on the final lap again mr spastic arrived and i for some dumb reason decided to attack before the turn to cross the bridge. big mistake. i just didn’t have it in me to TT all the way to the finish. we entered the final straight and 2 had already passed with everyone catching way to fast. i gave in, it was pretty much all over. my legs had been tingling for about a lap and a half and they were so not in shape.
i rode with the garmin as well which was awesome. tracking the ride is really worth every $ spend on the 500. i know i was in full on mad men mode because after checking the old cycle computer from the last crit i did [it was the last time i used it] we only averaged 34.4km – today we did a whopping 40.7km.
with this small freelance job i have on at the moment i am going to need to spend some money on the roadie. that creak…
maybe it was that causing me to ride like a nutter today?!#^&