HUMBLE PIE

This weekend was the first race of the 2010 season, and as many of you know I moved up into the cat 2’s for the new season. With this 2010 season I had a lot of optimism on how the season would unfold. So with the first race of the season in the books how did I fair? Let’s just say I was served up a very large slice of humble pie, and did not taste very good!!!!

With this race I was thrown into a realm that I’m not very accustom too. Last year was my first season back racing XC since 1998, and it seemed that with the random and unorganized training that I did, I always found myself on the podium. I will not lie, last year I became accustom to this.

Yesterday’s race started out much like most of my races last year. The bell goes off and I out sprint 30-40 other riders to the single track and I set the tempo. Yesterday’s race was no different. The problem was that once I got into the lead, within 2-3 of the race my legs began to feel like a ton of bricks. I moved from 1st to 20th in a matter of minutes, and before I knew it I was in 20th position. I don’t know exactly why this happened but it did! After a few minutes my legs began to breathe life again, and I began to come back. Unfortunately I got inoculated by fire, (those boys are FAST), and I found out first hand that in the cat 2’s unless your name is JHK (Jeremy Hogan-Kobelski), or Sam Schultz you’re NOT coming back. Fortunately, I was able to drag my sorry excuse of a 29er Crew member butt back up into 14th position before the race was done. This was very discouraging.

I don’t really know where to go from here. I will have to sit down with my coach and talk this one over. I have been training, I have been following the schedule, I have been eating right, (well maybe not that last one), I’m trying to eat right. As I said before, I’m in a new realm. I ‘m now coming to the realization, the days of just random training are over and they aren’t going to get the job done.

This season I can already tell, is going to be different than last year. This season is going to test my resolve. The question is how I am going to deal with it. Am I going to crawl into a fetal position and cry like an over grown baby, or brush it off and take it as a learning lesson.

Check back later because right now, I WANT TO DO THE FETAL POSITION.