Bowl, 5/13 edition.
Today I was dead-set on making sure I didn't get dropped, to continue my 'winning streak' at all costs. After all, now that I can look at data from my rides after the fact, I have to make sure that there isn't anything embarrassing in there. Otherwise, it will be there nagging me forever, that I failed at that one thing on that horrible day. My life will be ruined, and my fragile ego will shatter and I will cry.
OK, not really, but as I said earlier, I had been worried that something might have been really wrong with my riding. Now that I've got two victories (a clean completion is a victory in my book) under my belt, its a lot less worrying.
On to today's ride:
I worked a little later than I had planned, and was worried that I would be stuck in traffic and miss the bowl entirely. Luckily, I had my bike and clothes (and shoes this time) in the car, so I headed strait there, and discovered that I had plenty of time. Occasionally, I plan ahead, and sometimes it really pays off. Today was one of those days. I got in one warm up lap, and then we were off.
I heard there were some pros in the pack, and so from the start I hid out in the back, figuring that it would be really fast and probably I would get nervous. It turns out, I was dead wrong. We had a wonderfully mellow first lap - we accelerated up to speed so smoothly and gradually that it was like waking up from a nap. The rest of the ride was pretty typical, and being in the back I spent more time dealing with the squirrely folks than I'd like, but all in all it was good. I even just made it onto the back of the sprint group when they took off, and kept with them up to the line. Hit 28 on the sprint, which I'm pretty happy with. Have a look here:
Thu, 5/13 Rose Bowl Data
Side note: I didn't stop the GPS properly after playing with it yesterday on the drive home, and so I had this huge addition to the ride. I was all peeved, but then realized that the lap counter had incremented when the ride began, and separated the drive from the ride. And once i'd put it on the computer, I could delete the lap 0 and presto! I had my ride data. Now, I just need to figure out how to move laps into new activities...
OK, not really, but as I said earlier, I had been worried that something might have been really wrong with my riding. Now that I've got two victories (a clean completion is a victory in my book) under my belt, its a lot less worrying.
On to today's ride:
I worked a little later than I had planned, and was worried that I would be stuck in traffic and miss the bowl entirely. Luckily, I had my bike and clothes (and shoes this time) in the car, so I headed strait there, and discovered that I had plenty of time. Occasionally, I plan ahead, and sometimes it really pays off. Today was one of those days. I got in one warm up lap, and then we were off.
I heard there were some pros in the pack, and so from the start I hid out in the back, figuring that it would be really fast and probably I would get nervous. It turns out, I was dead wrong. We had a wonderfully mellow first lap - we accelerated up to speed so smoothly and gradually that it was like waking up from a nap. The rest of the ride was pretty typical, and being in the back I spent more time dealing with the squirrely folks than I'd like, but all in all it was good. I even just made it onto the back of the sprint group when they took off, and kept with them up to the line. Hit 28 on the sprint, which I'm pretty happy with. Have a look here:
Thu, 5/13 Rose Bowl Data
Side note: I didn't stop the GPS properly after playing with it yesterday on the drive home, and so I had this huge addition to the ride. I was all peeved, but then realized that the lap counter had incremented when the ride began, and separated the drive from the ride. And once i'd put it on the computer, I could delete the lap 0 and presto! I had my ride data. Now, I just need to figure out how to move laps into new activities...
posted by Me at 8:16 PM
