My updates suck

but everything else is going well.

The May/June round-up:
Lots of riding in the rain and poor weather... which shouldn't bother me. It seems easier in the fall, somehow, to deal with crap weather and be on the bike. It's spring! It should be warm! Cold and rain seem to be key ingredients for misery for me at this time of year. I can only imagine how much fun I am to ride with (again, another example of why it's probably best to train alone sometimes!).

I tried my hand at road racing, in what can only be described as "an unmitigated disaster". Which is never how you want to start out, but thankfully, it didn't last long. Since I am also a firm believer in the "you have to start somewhere" school of thinking, at least as it applies to cycling, I'm still glad I went ahead with it, and am looking for another opportunity to try another crit.

I did another mountain bike race (#3, for those of you keeping score at home), and it was hot as hell. The race itself was really fun - a long, gravel uphill, a couple of short single track sections, shorter hills (up and down) on gravel or dirt road, and a really fun, smooth single track sections to take you out to the grass, the feed zone, and the start/finish. I went with my regular strategy (ride really hard on the hill and in anything remotely wide and flat, minimize the damage in the single track and technical sections).
I actually managed to get it to payoff this time around, to boot! I hit the hill hard, and stayed with the top 3 girls for the climb. They started to pull away shortly after, but I had
a pretty good gap on the rest of the field by that point. Hitting the single track, it was time to go into "damage control", where I try to ride as smoothly as possible, and hope I've built enough of a lead over the next girls to stay ahead until I can push the pace again. I was moderately successful, but was passed by two girls before the end of the lap, putting me in 6th. On the second lap, I used the hill to get one of those spots back, and in one of the first sections of single track, passed a mechanical. And on lap two, I was able to hold onto my position, riding a bit better through the single track, and ended up just off the podium in 4th.

Despite telling Chinglishchick that the local testosterone-fest group ride was not the kind of training I needed to be doing, I found myself at the start this last weekend. And in a move I can only describe as "suicide", I went with the big kids for the longer/hillier route on the way out and on the way back in. Needless to say, I got dropped before too long, so I got to really work on my TT. Thankfully, I have excellent friends who are kind enough to wait up ahead (after a decent amount of suffering on my own, thanks), and essentially tow me the whole way back in. Even trying to stay on their wheel, I was worried that I was pretty close to cracking, but seeing as I didn't have any real alternatives to getting home, I held it together and made it ok. A little worse for wear, requiring a nap on the couch for an hour, but really proud of the effort in retrospect. Not to mention thankful that my friends are so awesome!