The leaves have pretty much all changed colours and have already started to fall, the trails are no longer lines of dirt in the distance, now just a big cluster of leaves and branches. I've gotten into the swing of things for school and the cross bike is starting to come around thanks to a quick pit stop at Liberty! today (thanks). I've decided that the mountain bike race season is over for me, after an awesome night ride on Wednesday night with JF and the boys from Hamilton, I realised that I just want to enjoy what is left of the none-snow riding conditions before we get to that point in November-December where the trails are too wet to ride and we have to wait for the snow to cover them. I'll go hard Tuesday and Thursday nights on the cross bike and go for fun mountain bike rides when I have the time on other week days, so probably one a week.
I'll be doing the races listed on the right and possibly a few across the river until I have no motivation to go hard left, hopefully I can get a few solid races in before that. The only iffy thing about training this time of the year is that it's the easiest time to catch a cold because everyones immune systems weaken simultaneously with the drop in temperature and the strong presence of new bacteria and viruses because everyone is getting sick, causing a negative spiral of sickness until the right antibodies and macrophages are recruited. Hopefully the season doesn't have to end that way but if it does, so be it, that's just the way she goes. I'm being very careful by always wearing multiple layers on my chest and eating a whole lotta greens, to the point where I'm eating baby spinach right from the box like De Cal showed me at Elliot Lake.
So, what have I learned this year from road and mountain bike racing? Can anyone really boil it down to two or three things in point form? Not a chance, not if you want to be realistic anyways. Every ride, there are millions of synapses firing in your brain, new bridges/connections are being formed the whole time you're riding. You learn the whole time you're riding the same way you learn from every little thing you do during the whole day, it may not be obvious or even clear what you have learned, but you're learning. During rest, your brain can sort out and store everything you've learned in long-term memory, the more time you spend resting, the more the brain can thoroughly sort out and store. What you have just learned from your ride becomes a little part of who you are until it has been totally forgotten, if it ever does, some day down the road. So, what have I learned? Ride and learn, race and learn, that's the only way to get experience because experience isn't measured in how many years you've been racing or riding but instead how many hours you're logged in the saddle riding or racing during those years as well as the quality of those hours.
I went through a pretty rough patch this season in terms of motivation on the bike, I really didn't think I would keep racing right through September, I was ready to call it quits before Buckwallow and my performance at Buckwallow didn't help much for motivation even after taking a week off work by going on vacation prior to the race. It took a while for me to really realise the importance of rest in practice and not just in theory and the amount of rest needed relative to workload, there is still alot to learn. All things that I will carry over to next season and do right this time.
I'm not going to write a recap race-by-race, but I do want to touch on one race; the Squeezer. I was asking around after the race and nobody seemed to have seen my awful start, I thought for sure since I was closest to the sidewalk that's the first thing people would notice; everyone seems to be going forward except for that guy in black who's going backwards. Turns out, I have video evidence! Look for the last racer to go by the camera in the lane closest to the camera (sidewalk), if you're good, you can listen for the loud crunching/dinging noise as I go by.
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