What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

The past few days, my scheduled training managed to get back on track. The persistent rains earlier this month held my cycling hours well below plan. After finishing the duathlon, I headed back out around the bike course in reverse direction, enjoying the scenery and fantastic weather. This brought my mileage for the day up to 60K, and since I spun along at a snail's pace, my cycling hours up to two. Sunday brought another lovely day, and I got out for a leisurely 95K, 3.5 hour zone 1 jaunt down through Lakeville and the Long Point Causeway across Great Quittacas Pond. Monday was up to KL's and the New Hampton training center where, despite her bellyaching about fatigue from Montreal, she managed to force the pace on every climb during our 2.5 hour ride along the western shore of Lake Winnipasukee and past Newfound Lake. As this was the first really warm day of the year, I seemed to feel it and finished that ride totally spent.

Tuesday night brought me back to Wompatuck. I managed to get there without being stopped by the gendarmes this week, and was on the bike by 5:45. With most of the big boys down at the pro races leading up to Philly, the herd was a bit thinner, maybe 35 riders. This kept it lively as there was lots of room to move around, and we stayed pretty stretched out most of the night. After doing the first five laps or so up front, I retreated to further back for a bit. Towards the end, I tried something new and just went to the front and kept attacking repeatedly. Never got anywhere, so I was either marked or slow, but I figured I might as well push the limits of my recovery, so as soon as I caught my breath I'd go again. After all, this is a training race. The last lap was uneventful, but the Coast juniors are a bit annoying. They seem to like to hold little team meetings in the middle of the bunch, and they can't seem to talk without looking over at one another, and swerving around in the process. With good youthful acceleration, they jump on every move, but then do nothing when they get there. Maybe they were just trying to keep it together, as one of them won the field sprint, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

So tonight I'll only need about an hour and a half easy spin in order to just make my May minimum bike hours goal of 40. That's not too bad, considering the crappy weather and the number of races that were on the calendar. Right now I feel pretty strong and fit, but it will take more focused, specific training to make gains from here, as the low hanging fruit has already been picked. The next few weekends I do not have any races planned, so after a few easy days I might start piling on some good stuff.

Of course, the duathlon got me excited, and despite my intention of tabling the running for the summer, I still checked over the multi-sport calendar to see if anything interesting loomed on the horizon. I found the weekend after next, the Fly by Night Duathlon was scheduled to take place on the racetrack at Watkins Glen in New York. This is an evening event, which might make travel a bit easier, although WG is quite a haul from here. The last time I was there was in 1980, for the very last Formula 1 US Grand Prix ever held at the Glen. Alan Jones won driving for Saudia-Williams. This was also the last year of full ground effects cars, with sliding side skirts that stayed in contact with the ground to seal off the airfoil bottom. It got so crazy that these cars could take corners at 120 mph that they could not take at 100 mph, because the downforce was less. This led to the flat-bottom rule and elimination of the skirts.

The trip to the Glen was my first real vacation. My girlfriend and I first drove our 1978 Ford Fiesta S down to Martinsville, Virginia for the Old Dominion 500 stock car race. NASCAR was not quite what it was today. To give you some idea of how long ago this was, that was the last year of the 115 inch wheelbase cars, and the minimum weight was still 3700 pounds. Rookie driver Dale Earnhardt made a lot of noise and won that weekend. After Martinsville, we headed to Virginia Beach for a few days before making the trip up to New York, switching gears to F1 the following weekend. A three day infield pass to the Glen was $27 then. We splurged and spent an additional $65 for paddock passes and seats on the roof of the Lotus pit, looking right down on owner Colin Chapman and driver Mario Andretti. We had full access to the garage area too. I took some awesome pictures, but since my girlfriend was none too happy about our breakup years later, I have none of them. I do still have a souvenier t-shirt around here somewhere, but I am totally bummed that, because of being tapped out on cash, I missed a chance for the best keepsake. You see, after the race, we filed out right through the garage where the teams worked. Well, in F1, at least at that time, the mechanics literally sold the shirts right off their backs! I could have bought an authentic team Ferrari mechanics shirt, grease stains, sponsor patches, and all, for $20! Sadly we needed all the money we had left for gas to get home, and had to pass.

There you have it. More nostalgia from solobreak. This is too long already, or I might give you a rundown of other car racing tracks where I have raced my bike, such as Loudon (road course), Lee, Thompson, and Star Speedways, and even the 'cross race I promoted at Seekonk. Maybe some other time... Thanks for reading.