Pause

I decided to hit pause on my race season start... call me smart, call me a sissy - either way I'm NOT racing my MTB today in 50 degree pissing rain and mud.  I usually open my racing season with the Chickasaw Classic an hour south of Nashville, TN but the weather forecast for race day was a consistent 70% chance of rain throughout the week.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to a sloppy and/or cold race; anybody who races cyclocross in the late fall will at some point have a nasty race.  I raced cyclocross last November in North Carolina in 40 and rain, which ended up taking about 2 hours in the car with the heat cranked and 4 layers of clothes to stop shivering.  Hell, I even did Chickasaw a few years back in sub-par conditions.  The day before saw torrential rain, and race day was overcast and maybe 45 degrees.  The course was a non-stop peanut butter mess, but I had already made the 5 hour trek so I toed the line.  It worked out well for me since I ended up with the win. 

Still eager to race this weekend, I even looked into driving 6 hours North to hit up Barry-Roubaix, but I would have been severely time crunched to work a mostly full day, come home to pack, and leave early enough not to make it another post-midnight bedtime.  That, and it was supposed to be about 30 degrees at the start of the race.  Again, somewhat sissy-ish but at this point in my racing career I think I benefit more from not beating myself down early in the season for a training race.  This will pay dividends in spades come November when I am driving to New Jersey for the USGP, and still have the motivation to do so.  It's always way better to want to race but not than to force yourself to look for motivation and half-ass your effort.

Soooooo, I'm sitting at my desk, enjoying my second pot of coffee on the day getting a laundry list of things done that would have otherwise put yet another time crunch on me - boxing up eBay sales, paying bills, watching Ghent-Wevelgem, downloading training data.  OH, and blogging.  Can't forget about that.

later.
 
-the Mexler