POSTS

It's official

Taken directly from the horse's mouth:

It's official now, I get to claim the 2006 19 - 29 NORBA Marathon Series title. Sweet. :)

Today and tomorrow my plan is to start a rough map through the end of next July. I know the big race date for next year: Nationals at Mount Snow the 19 - 22 of July. The weekend after that is Sugar Mountain in NC. Sugar Mountain will hopefully be icing on the cake. Looking at Big Dave's results in Brian Head last weekend, I've got a lot of catching up to do if I want to be a mid-pack Semi-Pro by '08. He went all the way to July before he even lost of national race in the Experts this year and even at that hadn't finished below 4th. Got low-20s in the Semi-Pro race. And he can easily put 10 minutes or so into me in a two hour race. At least I have someone that I race against on a semi-regular basis early in the season to test myself against.

So the big reason for starting to map out the season is that I have to reign myself in. I haven't had a really good day on the bike since Nationals. They've all been sluggish at best. I'm putting in good times; I'm just not feeling it. I think diet's part of the issue, but I also think late-May/June's training was another. I put in some really intense blocks of training a few weeks too early and peaked before those races. I tried to hold on to the fitness toward the end of June and just drug it out too long. Looking at the season I have in front of me, if I do race the Arizona series, my season will start the end of January and basically run until July with no more than 3 weeks off at a time. I'm going to have to be smart about it if I'm going to make it to July in the condition I need to be in and still be able to put in some decent efforts early in the season at a few of the MBAA races to get the points needed to win that series. Hopefully, a few of the NMBS races will coincide with the local series so I can group them together.

Quick shout out to NM racer, Glen Gollrad. Pulled in a 2nd place at the Expert 30+ Short Track up in Aspen this weekend. And Big Dave pulled a 14th in the Semi-Pro XC. More results will be posted as the races are run.