Tuesday Night Track = Good for the Soul

I haven't been writing, because I had my crappiest race of the season on Sunday, and was struggling to come up with positive thoughts. But, I'm happy to report that we went to the track last night, and things are once again right with the world.

So, back to Sunday. The Wente Crit. It should have been a good race, as I was coming off my first build period and had been in a recovery week. So, fitness-wise, I should have been gangbusters. But no. The heat combined with a HUGE delay in our race (hoping all the ladies who crashed in the prior race are healing up!) conspired to completely shut down my body. After sitting in the heat for several hours, I just had no energy at all. My legs were heavy. And, I was hungry to start the race because I hadn't brought enough food or electrolytes. The end result was that I popped during the second of two preme laps and was unable to claw my way back to the peloton. It was rather disappointing and disheartening. The silver lining is that my team mate, Lala managed to get 5th place - her first podium finish. And, another team mate who was trying her first crit hung in almost to the very end and managed to have a lot of fun! Yay!

OK, back to the track! There was a good showing of ladies last night. Beth, Alicat, Velobella, Marscat, Ippoc were all there, along with a couple non-blogger chicas and we had a junior boy and a senior man, so they gave us our own race. On the rail a couple of younger guys tried to sneak on, but I said we only wanted girly men, and that seemed to get rid of them. Between Ali, Beth and Erika, there was almost never a moment's rest between attacks. I was able to hang with quite a few of the moves, but sometimes not. I was able to claw my way back in a couple times, which made me happy. I even was able to lay down a couple attacks of my own. I can put out a real big burst when I am recovered. But, when I am already sitting at red-line, that is when I have a hard time matching the attacks of others or putting on my own. In that situation, I am hugging the apron, just trying to stay attached with all my might. So, I guess I need to work on Anaerobic Endurance as well as trying to raise my threshold a bit. Because, I can still put out a good surge, even if I am sitting just below threshold. Oh, and I got one heck of a cramp in my right calf during the first race, which probably means I really screwed up my electrolytes on Sunday....and, I realized that one cannot stretch out a cramp on a track bike. I tried riding with my heel down for a while, but couldn't completely work it out until we stopped.

So, it was a super-fun night. I got to work on a lot of stuff and got to learn from watching the more experience racers, which was cool. Thanks for the good times, ladies!