Found: Racing Legs and Stomach Problems

This weekend it was just Vontoux and I at the house (I don't count Birdie), as Heather went home to MI for her bridal shower. She had a surprise visitor as well, as Mary Leedahl flew in from CA to join her in the shower festivities. I'm sure Heather liked that. :) Vontoux and I had a busy weekend planned as well, with 2 races and a muddy trip to the dog park on the agenda.

I wasn't sure how well I would do this weekend, as I have been suffering from stomach/bowel 'problems' since Tues. I must have eaten something that decided to wage war against my stomach. Not fun. I was hoping it would go away by the weekend, but I realized that it didn't when I was awoken at 5:30am on Sat with 'issues'. I was thinking about not even going to the race, but I decided to go anyway since it was only a 45 min drive. So, without further ado, here are race reports:

Sat - Sauk Center RR #1
This was just a short road race on a pretty cool course. It was on rural roads, with a few good climbs, some 40+mph descents, and some nice views. We had to do 2 loops around a 15mi course. The first lap I was regretting going, as my stomach was not feeling too hot. But as the first lap ended (with everyone still together), it started to feel better. On the first big climb on the second lap, there were some attacks, and it trimmed the field nicely, to probably about 30 riders. That group stayed together all the way to the finish, where they opened up the whole road for the sprint. I entered the sprint too far back in the pack, but still ended up 11th overall. The legs felt good, so I was happy with the result.

Sun - WORS MTB #1
Good times. First mtb race of the season. The WORS series is one of the most popular mtb series in the nation, sometimes getting close to 1000 racers at one event. Crazy. The course at Iola was nice, it was a fast 5 mile loop with some tight singletrack with good flow. Not many tough climbs or crazy technical stuff. We had to do 4 laps. The beginning was insanely dusty with all those racers taking off at once. Amazingly, there weren't many bottlenecks with all those racers on the course at the same time. My legs felt really good, no problems with cramping like I normally get toward the end of a mtb race. I was feeling very good for the first 3 laps, but at the beginning of the 4th lap, my stomach started acting up again. I think it was a mixture of the 'problems' combined with starting to get hungry. I had to slow down, but I didn't get passed by too many people, so it wasn't too bad. I ended up 35th overall and 9th in my age group out of 129 racers in the Comp division. I was only a little over 7 min back from the winner, so that is encouraging for the rest of the WORS races.

All in all, it was a good weekend of racing, and it felt good to have the racing legs start to come back...and now I just got off the phone with Heather. She is making her way back from MI, with a car full of bridal shower goodies. And she made it through Chicago in one piece, which is hard to do usually.

And since I don't have any pics from the races since Heather wasn't here, here is a pic of Vontoux. If he could talk, right here he would be saying: "Stop taking stupid pics of me and take me to the freaking dog park."