Monday, April 13, 2009

HOTN Race Report Preview

First, let me apologize for the lame Easter blogging, especially my "Happy Easter" post. I felt that I owed you something on the long-weekend and didn't want you to go into OBR withdrawl. The last few days of last week and this weekend have been non-stop rush, rush, rush to get things done on the bicycle and home front. I'm also going to make a preemptive apologize for this upcoming week as well - soooooo much going on I feel my head is about to spin off: career stuff, bike stuff, house stuff, family visiting, chores that need to be done and bikes that need some TLC. It's going to be a crazy week, so bear with me.

I don't have the time to get into The Hell of the North race, or tour details . . . . more on the differences between the two later . . . . tonight. All I will say is it was a long, hard, at times muddy and wet ride. Despite not making a second appearance on the podium in as many weeks, I am happy with how I did and felt. I would definitely do this event again and learned a ton from it. I was pretty much spent at the end of the race/tour and felt it today. No amount of Easter chocolate was able to help me recover, though I did do my best at packing it in my face to promote recovery, or obesity - which ever came first.

I got out for a quick one plus hour shake down ride on Saturday before putting the Fisticuff to the test on Sunday. It passed with flying colours. I love this bike!

I managed, with the help of Kent at Phat Moose, to get the Fisticuff up and running for the weekend. It was a late Thursday night getting it dialed in, but with no work on Good Friday it was no big deal. Big thanks to Rodd for hooking me up with some proper tires for the event - tiny teeny 23c road tires wouldn't have cut it and big knobby cx tires would be too much resistance.

On the La Bici Squadra home page, they stated that this event was 80km. I found out at 77.3km into the race, or 2.7 km from where I thought the finish should be, that it wasn't in fact an 80 km race/tour. Why is it that roadies round down? Are they all pessimistic sadists?

More tomorrow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

crazy week... hehe... try my life.
Every damn day I gotta find a place to live.
I have a tough job with little freakish 20 somethings wanting to prove something against the older 30 somethings. Highly competitive.
I only see my kids when my bitchy x says I can.
I gotta get riding time in (trying to get in 600km a week now).

Plus, I gotta get a screw in every so often...

oh yah, and food.

Matt Surch said...

Whoa.