Monday, August 21, 2006

No Hilltowns - Onward to Cross Season

Hilltowns ends up being cancelled due to lack of volunteers. Just shows that without the volunteers, races do not happen. Period. Renews my determination to thank at least one volunteer at every race I do. Really too bad for a classic race to be cancelled. Hopefully next year will turn out different.

But, that did allow me to crank up a solid training weekend, with about 14 hours of work between swimming, biking, and running. Plus, I had the chance to start learning how to do cyclocross. I haven't been on trails in about 15 years, since I went head first over my handlebars and really had bad road rash on my shoulder. It was something to get back on a trail, on a cross bike no less, and try to attempt flying dismounts and mounts. The dismounts are easy because in tris this is how I get off the bike going into Transition 1. However, we never get back on the bike. This meant that the remounting proved to be somewhat of a challenge. But, after two practice sessions I started to get the hang of it. It is really nice to have a diversion from the roads after a whole season of road riding. I'm starting to catch the cross bug, and hopefully soon can try a race without killing myself or someone else.

This weekend is the Cranberry Country Tri, an olympic distance race which could be my last one of the season (baby pending). I was able to borrow a pair of Cosmic Carbone SSCs from a teammate to try and potentially buy. I am very fired up to have something resembling aero wheels on my ride. I'm going to give them a try tomorrow and see what happens. Hopefully speed to burn.

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