Good late season riding

Since Thursday I got some pretty good riding done, starting with a mountain bike ride on Friday with De Cal. We hit up most of the trails in the St. Catharines area and even got on the Bruce Trail to climb up a small river before parting ways on the canal path. My mtb was working pretty horribly and I had no big ring, but other then that the ride was awesome. Nearly 5 hours of riding and a day off work, good start to the weekend.

Saturday was the hilly club ride, I was feeling awful and was late getting to the meeting point so I spent the first little while chassing the group down, good thing Hopkins dropped back to help me. I had almost nothing on the hills, Etzl was hurting pretty bad too so we crawled into Smithville together. No townline sprint. Sunday was completely different, flat and I felt great. The pace of the echelon kept picking up on the way in from Attercliffe until we reached a point where there were attacks thrown and 5 of us were left. The stretch to the townline sprint got pretty intense, haven't pushed that hard in a while.

Monday I had absolutely no strength after work, just munched out and slept. Last night was the flat Tuesday night course in North Pelham. I guess everyone was feeling pretty cooked because the pace was brutally slow, there were some decent attacks but nothing getting away for even a lap. The 10 laps felt pretty long after nearly puking twice from efforts, I actually squeezed out a half decent sprint on adrenaline alone, timing was way off though. I got a little motor pacing from my dad in the soccer mom mini van on the way home, great draft but I find a truck is better.

Today, again, not much energy. We just finished barn prep today, I was hoping for a day off tomorow to get in a mountain bike ride but I'll be working and I've still got some repairing to do on the mtb. My repairing usually results in a trip to the bike shop, so it'll probably be the TT tomorow.

I won't be doing Via Italia, I think one more weekend off racing would be wise. I'll be at the Marathon Champs and if that doesn't go completely wrong then I'll be at Paul's as well. I was thinking about my goal for the Squeezer this year, based on last year's results I'd have to beat Kinsie to do that, he was fourth U23 at Nationals. I think that's a little unrealistic, if it's a similar field then I'd be happy with a top 15. We'll see how she goes.