Evening the scales

West Branch Iowa was the scene of my racing 'effort' this past saturday. I experienced a new challenge in racing because this was actually two back to back races, and both needed to be successful to win the event.

The first part was a 22 mile road race on this year's State RR course. Plenty of rolling terrain, which will make for a good race in august. We only did one lap, so doing three loops as a cat 3 will be good times.

Jim Cochran and Ryan J. of Atlas were the agressive team of the day. One or the other of them always seemed to be attacking the field. I decided to chase down everyone of Jim C.'s attacks and let Ryan J's attacks dangle off of the front. Not too much thought went into this tactic, except that I knew from the last Two Bee race that I entered, that I couldn't bridge up to every attack and still finish well.

I gave out a couple of pulls from time to time, but also defintively followed the lead wheel, at other times to conserve energy.

Then with 21 miles gone in this 22 mile race, just as I was finishing pulling the group up to bring Jim C.'s final attack in, the group seemed to accelerate. The acceleration didn't let up either, I was slowly being dropped. Ooops, I guess this wasn't an acceleration it was the final sprint? My spedometer only said 21.3miles, so I seriously didn't see the finish line coming. I would have tucked in had I had a better idea where the race finished. Most likely, then Jim C. would have won, and we would have been sprinting for 2nd, however, that would have been better for me then finishing last in the group sprint. There were only 8 survivors in this group, so I came in 8th out of 16 to 20 racers, and Ryan J. then took the overall win, impressive considering all of the attacking he did throughout the race.

Then the time trial... a four mile race against the clock on a rolling stretch of road with a fierce cross wind. No one was using TT bikes (except Conn), so this was a pretty even playing field. I had a good time just under 10 minutes but Josh Madsen took the win in this event with a time 10 seconds faster.

The main variable that could be analyzed after the event, was how much energy was used in the Road Race versus how much was saved to have more left for the TT. It would have been harder, for example, to pull and attack during the RR and then still have your best TT. Ultimately, Josh Madsen had the best strategy for the day and won overall. This is a series of three races, so I may be able to try again july 5th.

Feeling sort of defeated, I decided to continue competing until I felt more accomplished. I weighed 163.6 pounds when I woke up that morning (more than I have weighed in many weeks). I stepped on the scale when I got home from the race and was happy to then only weigh 161bs.

So, I made a sport of seeing if I could sweat out at least another pound of water weight. I strapped on the running shoes and went for a jog in the middle of the 90 plus degree heat at about noon.

I ran about 7 miles, and it was pure agony. I hopped on the scale and told my self that if I was 160 or lower, that I could take well deserved rest day on sunday... 156.4lbs! Oh yeah and only 8% body fat. I Won! Even though it was against myself. Sort of pathetic, really. I ate and drank like a pig on sat/sunday to see if I could gain 10 pounds by monday morning. Oops, only 160.4lbs, dang.