Traverse Lessons

First ever first place!



Many things in life have opposites or antonyms. Black and white. Life and death. For my bike racing career I would say Vision Quest and The Traverse.

Everything that went wrong for Vision Quest seemed to go right for The Traverse.

I'm trying to think what I did before the race that helped. Here is my short list:

- Took Tuesday off from riding before the race
- Went a little harder than usual Thursday before the race
- Took a smaller Camelback
- Drank a few bottles of Gatorade the day before
- Ate a large breakfast and lunch (6 dollar burger from Carls Jr.) the day before
- Slept GREAT Thursday and Friday night
- Relaxed and put no pressure on myself. No goals except for being faster than last year

During the race:

- Ate 1 Clif Bar and three gels (not a lot at all)
- Drank Cytomax (think this is my staple drink now)
- Pushed more than usual in an endurance ride

So who knows what really helped me and what didn't. I wanted to keep everything the same as much as possible going into the ride. I changed tons of stuff before Vision Quest and it backfired on me.

I think the reason I did so well was the heat. Take away the heat and I finish a lot further down in the rankings (11 out of 98). I've learned that bike racing has a lot of variables involved and some days you feel good and some you don't. There is no way to control everything and I was lucky that one of my "good" days landed on race day.

In other news I just looked at the Socal State Series results from Sunday and only two guys made the trip to Santa Barbara that have been competing with me. That is GREAT news for me. It means I didn't lose too much point wise for the overall standings.

I plan to attend every remaining event so hopefully that will land me in third place for the series. It still feels stupid though to finish third out of only four people to race consistently. I wish more people would compete in my class. It would make finishing third mean more.