Let's do this!!

Last weekend, two things happened - I rode about 130 miles and spent about 8 hours cleaning, waxing and re-waxing my skis to put away for summer storage. I also cleaned up the make-shift wax room, which takes over about half of our attic for 5 months a year (the latter task was substantially worse than the former by the way).

The last few years I've noticed that there's usually about a 3-4 week period after my last ski race, where I am in denial about ski season being over and find it difficult to really get going biking or putting any type of structure into training for anything. I work out a lot, but typically don't put any thought or plan into what I'm doing. After spending all winter outside, all of a sudden, the thought of going for a bike ride in 30 degrees and windy weather, and dealing with numb fingers and the rush to get a dry shirt on after working out in the cold (do avoid getting sick) and everything else that goes along with the cold, seems like the worst idea ever.

Then after a few casual bike rides, and typically one or two with reasonably warm temperatures, it seems like a flip switches. I think that happened this past weekend. Saturday, I joined a bunch of my teammates on a 90 mile ride, including, for the first time this year, trying to go hard on a bike and really crank it up. My legs were thrashed, but the next morning, I had absolutely no hesitation in jumping on my bike and getting some more miles in. Mentally, ski season is finally over. That doesn't mean that I can't wait for November, but at the same time, I can look back on a great season for a variety of reasons, and be happy with it, and also look forward to the summer and biking.

Last night was the first GVCC Tuesday night race of the year and it took me about 5 minutes to try to attack off the front. It wasn't the best race, but I felt pretty good and it was good to get back in the action. This Sunday is the GVCC Bloomfield Classic, which is a tough course that also overlaps with my roller ski TT course. We'll see how it goes, but I'm definitely looking forward to pinning a race number back on and getting out there. The next couple months should make for some exciting races (and hopefully some decent results for my teammates and I).