The end of July and I am sitting at a hotel in Indianapolis,relaxing 2 days before we start racing. I just finished riding the last 3 days of RAGBRAI with our Psycho Biker team as a warm up. All 3 days were short, not very hilly and pleasant with ride weather that was sunny and on Saturday, bordering too cool. I hope those 150 miles are the perfect last few days to get me up to race speed.
I have 5 days of racing in a row, Sprints on Tuesday, Wed. a 2K, 500 on Thursday, 10k Points race Friday and finally, Sat. a 5k Scratch race. My season of endurance training is set to be tested. So far it’s been a fun season with some good days and some bad days. I really don’t quite have the self coach plan figured out but it’s been fun to try. Those of you who are coaches, I have a lot more respect for you. It is not easy.
There are a few other NSC racers here this week as well so I will try to update some of their results on this blog as the week goes by.
The week is bracketed by Junior champs and some elite champs. Some of the juniors have had some great results so all of us masters have some work to do to equal the juniors accomplishments.
I got here very late last night after finishing the Iowa ride in Fort Madison and then having to ride back to Knoxville to collect my car and all the track gear. A drive back east, with a little off track path lead me back to Fort Madison again. For anyone who wants to know what happens at the end of the day in RAGBRAI’s finish town, I saw for myself. NOTHING! by 7 P.M. the town looked perfectly quiet like Ragbrai never happened. I crossed into IL on a rickety old railroad bridge that costs $2 to cross only to find a Google maps route that lead me through a ton of quiet secondary roads heading north until I finally got to Peroria IL and Hwy 74. That would not have been my first choice but I didn’t have a map so Google it was. (A side note, my ATT Iphone could not connect to Google maps but luckily I had a Verizon Ipad that did connect and got me where I needed to go, Thanks Colin at Wireless World)
My plan was to sleep late, take advantage of the free breakfast, unpack, set up the bikes and then get some really easy track laps in during the afternoon. All the plans happened except the track laps. Major Taylor Velo is pad locked shut with no one around. Plan B, go to the grocery store and buy food for the week.
So here I am, blogging while watching the Brickyard 400 NASCAR race on TV, while it is happening at the Indianapolis Speedway a few miles from my hotel. No wonder I got the last room available. That would have been sad to arrive at 1 A.M. and not have a room.
More adventure reports to come as I can fit them in.