The Weak and Weary

This has been a long season but after reading Jonny's last post and now today Willi's 2500th I've got hopes of my master plan coming together. You see, where many of the others have been burning themselves to sweaty little nubs with doubled-up cx race weekends for the past month, I've had it pretty easy. At Wrentham a few weeks ago I was already hearing good competitors start to moan about training, life, late-night tire gluing, and of course racing in the mud and dealing with the aftermath. That's the part of cross that prevents me from being a crazed devotee like so many others. It's a good sport for bike shop employees to hit during the slow season, as they get boned by flat out weekend work during the spring road races. But for the rest of us, at least those with day jobs, the outlay of sweat equity exceeds what I'm willing to invest. At least to get serious anyway.

This season's schedule for cross is more packed than any in memory. I've got mostly single weekends planned around a few running races. But with Providence being so close, this weekend I'm going to try the double. I hope that everyone else is feeling just as cooked as Willi (who is also going to cook Saturday night, score). My training went decent this week, hence the Grinch image. Even with my light and loafy schedule, yesterday I wasn't feeling too energetic, and by 2 pm I still had not gone out to ride. Then I read Thom's comment about the cross video on Willi's blog, and decided hell, I may as well watch it. I have all that shit adblocked at my office but since I was telecommuting, I won't tell if you don't. Well I only made it through about the first five minutes but it was Nys (I think, I'm not a fanboy) grinding down a mucky straightway, cranking the power, winning the race, covered in slime from head to tow. Really though he was not grinding, he was on top of the gear. It reminded me of Jonny's dare-I-say-epic win last Saturday, when he had twenty seconds on second place, who was his team mate Kevin, who had another twenty seconds back to third. Yet Boldy was still in a fucking zone, drilling it, obviously "as hard as he could" like a time trial. I believe him when he says he never looked back, because if he had, even a nut like him would not go that hard with the win in the bank and another race the next day. But it was inspiring as hell just the same. And like Nys, he was on top of the gear. (sidenote to the rest of you: Nys, Page, riders like Jonny might hang 38/46 on their bikes with a 12/25 in the back, but they're going WAY FUCKING FASTER than you. Just sayin. Gear appropriately. More on this later, maybe).

Anyhow, after watching the Nys video, suddenly my heart and desire to train grew three sizes in an instant, just like the Grinch. Within minutes I was kitted up and out on the road, in a big gear, but on top of it, banging out an hour at just under threshold. I wanted to keep going, but with a double this weekend I of course shut it down and spun it out for the last half hour. That is not the point though. There is no point. Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day man. Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.