Time and Temp
Yesterday I did the Morgantown Road Race. I had ridden the course (which I really like a lot) the week before, sprinting up every climb and powering down. I felt great and was very motivated. But it was about 40 degrees warmer on race day and turned into an absolute nightmare for me. First climb, couldn’t breathe, whole body on fire. It was already over for me. I cruised along but could never get enough oxygen and eventually became dangerously dehydrated. I spent about 25 minutes total just lying on the side of the road a couple times. I wanted to finish though. And I did. Come to find out, I posted the slowest finishing time of the day at 3:23:28 for 46 miles. I’m strangely proud of that. If you look at the full results, you can see A LOT of time gaps. It was a rough day for all. Check out my writeup on pghracing.org for more info.
Today I didn’t really feel like riding my bike. I still kinda felt like I was hungover and I still have a headache. I woke up around 7am and tuned in to watch the Tour of Flanders live online. The famous race takes place in Belgium, so there is a big time difference. In the US, Versus broadcasts a time-delayed replay at 5pm. A lot of people complain that people watching live shouldn’t post any spoilers. Being as I’m addicted to the internet, I’m very opposed to this notion, so I was blasting away updates the whole time. I shouldn’t have to wait until everybody else gets around to watching some race to say anything about it. Not my problem. Anyways, it was an awesome race. All the favorites were battling it out all day long, Cancellara showed why he is nicknamed Spartacus, and even Lance Armstrong did really well. Here’s Cancellara and Boonen just after they broke away. I had dreamed my Morgantown race would have occurred a little more like this:
After watching Cancellara win and looking outside, I did end up going for a 1 hour ride around the city. 20 degrees cooler today and I felt much better. Damn that heat. I suppose I’ll be racing again soon at the first ACA crit on Wednesday and Mingo on Sunday. On top of that, Paris-Roubaix is next weekend, one of the very best pro races of the year. Since I’ll be at Mingo during the race, I suppose I’ll have to hide from the internet all day long and find a way to watch the stupid Versus replay.