Not much

To report. I had some witty idea for a post, but the aging brain was seemingly unable to hang on to it long enough to get it into the keyboard. Rode the trainer a bit the past few days, even made it an hour on Monday. Seeing the riders on the latest Toddcast and reading about all the others doing two and three hour rides makes me wonder if I should be doing that shit. There are a lot of things I used to do that I don't do anymore: ride rollers, lift weights, three hour rides in January, win races... wonder if that is all related?

Battenkill Roubaix is now showing as all filled up, just three short months away from race day. That is pretty fucking bizarre. Norton's Palmer race has less than ten entries??? I liked Battenkill a lot, but part of the charm was the grassroots feel of the event. The huge fields are going to make that race a little too intense, I'm afraid. This will be like the real Roubaix, with mad scrambles before each dirt section. As if April races aren't already crashfest enough, now we're putting 125 riders out on a course that has a downhill dirt section in the first two miles? Hmmmmm.

The worst part about this situation is the race schedule shows eleven fields going off within a 1 hour and 45 minute period. At least half these fields will have over 100 riders. The course is hard, and 100% certain to break up every field. Therefore, after the first 30K or so, you are going to have somewhere between 30-50 grouppettos strewn all along the route. Obviously there won't be enough pace vehicles and officials, and field mixing is going to be off the charts. Last year the race was great and I wish the promoters all the success in the world, but for this year I see incredible growing pains and I'm not about to commit to this one 90 days in advance.

Got is almost seven miles running this morning. It was too cold for any structure, and it ended up just a few ticks under an 8 minute/mile pace. The fields are lumpy and frozen, but I was reasonably warm while wearing an (for running) absurd amount of clothing. It was only 11 degrees outside at that time, but since it's only getting up to 20 or so today, I felt that I may as well get it over with before the wind picked up. Thanks for reading.