I just hate racing in cold, wet weather and today just happened to be one of those days. It was about 55 - 57 degrees in Madison and raining lightly for the 10:30 start of the Endeavour Criterium. We basically had 40 minutes plus 4 laps around the Research Park loop which is about .9 miles long with one small climb and a nice long flat before the turn in to the uphill finish. It was pretty much just a cold, wet windy day and the legs didn't want to respond no matter how hard I tried. I was soaked through every article of clothing, my feet were soaked and cold and I had tire spray constantly hitting me in the face. I felt good coming in to the race and I knew I had to support Tony in an effort to get the overall title for WI Cup points but I couldn't do anything today. I tried to take a little flyer to get the legs warmed up but as soon as I went I knew I had nothing, my legs were fried pretty much right away. My breathing felt good and I wasn't breathing too hard so I know that it had to be the cold that just was taking everything out of my muscles. I couldn't do anything to help Tony and he was really on today, basically staying at the front the whole race and looking super strong. Near the end there was a small split on the last lap and Tony took off but Ryan (overall Cup leader) was on his wheel and in the sprint Ryan ended up nipping Tony by maybe a tire width, it was really close. Either way Tony needed to finish two spots ahead of Ryan so the title was was Ryan's to keep and that pretty much closed out our racing season. I got 11th in the sprint, which really wasn't much of a sprint as everyone was scattered from the pressure put on during the last lap.
During the next couple of weeks I don't race mountain bike so I'll just do a couple of tour rides with my wife and keep doing some relaxed training rides through September. I'll cut back in October to about 2 to 3 days of riding per week and then I'll start to amp things up again in November. I guess now that the season is over I can look back and say I did decent for my first year back but I really wish I would've done better or got at least one win. For the year my results were as follows: 20th, 26th, 34th, 3rd, 18th, 8th, 11th, 21st, 24th, 25th, 8th and 11th. Not bad, but not exactly great either. I got 3 top-10 and 5 top-15 placings which was good enough for 11th overall in the WI Cup series, only 3 points away from 10th place. Well, that's about it for the racing year. I'll keep you all up to date on my training progress for next year as I start winding down and preparing for the 2007 season. Here are some pictures from the crappy race today:
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