Well, I apologize for letting this thing go dormant for a while, as usual, no excuses, just figure no one would be interested in my day to day ritual I call life. Anyway, of note though, I participated in my first bike race (a criterium) yesterday. I can safely say..... I finished. Not a spectacular performance by any stretch, but I'm not disappointed.
Several have requested an AAR of my race, so here it is....
Holy crap, that was hard! At least no one crashed.
To look at the statistical details, you can go here.
My overall thoughts are positive. There were 39 racers, and I placed 20th, and I was not the last guy across the line :)
The Yo-Yo'ing effect from being in the back of a group in Criterium pretty much killed me. I found it harder and harder to keep with the pack around each and every turn. There were 2 guys in front of me from the same team, and I tried to get around them to help minimize my Yo-Yo'ing but they just wouldn't let me. I clearly had better cornering abilities than some, but others just had more of a kick in their sprint.
I've also decided that looking at all the data that my cyclocomputer gives me during a race isn't necessarily a good thing. I think next time I'll change the fields I can see so I don't start analyzing myself in the middle of the race.
I'm now looking forward to my first road race, which won't be until next year. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain at least some kind of fitness program this winter so some of what I gained this year will not be lost.
I'll be headed off to the Netherlands in a few weeks too. I hope to update this with some of my experiences of my first trip to another country as well (Canada doesn't count) . So start looking again around the weeks of August 21st. I'll be spending 2 weeks in Amsterdam, then I'll be spending a weekend in Ruedesheim am Rhein, Germany.
