So I will summarize the rest of the races: Criterium: pre-race storm was fun (I have never seen ice blocks fall out of the sky and chip a windshield before!), actual race was not fun. Mankato: fun because Mankato was the town where Pa drove the lumber-filled wagon on Little House on the Prairie, so it made me reminisce about my favorite TV show when I was a kid. Fun to be aggessive and get in breaks. Not fun because all the breaks I was in got brought back. Good hard effort for the day though. But not very fun at the end. Stillwater: we won't even go into the race, so you can guess...not fun. My legs are toast! I need to rest up this coming week. I have been racing A LOT since Gila. But there was fun after the race because Stillwater is a cool little town to have lunch in, and I rode across the bridge to Wisconsin for a cooldown. And it topped off a good hard week of racing. There is NO WAY training at home can make my legs feel this crappy! My quads feel as if someone beat them with a hammer. So that is good.
Someone recently told me they didn't think Nature Valley was suited to me as a rider. To be fair, that person was right. I don't rock the house in short flat time trials, and I don't really enjoy being guttered for hours at a time in windy races, and technical crazy crits. But I do want to face my weaknesses and become more well-rounded. And the only way to do that is to make myself do these races! If I only go to races I like, I will never face what I really need to work on! So I am glad I came even though there were perhaps more moments of struggle than fun.
My goals were met. I am just not going to ever look at race results for this race or I may have to rewrite and remove all the optimism from this post.
