4luvandlife

fit a race into painting a kids room last weekend. got to Mankato at 12:30 and switched things up by warming up. strange sensation to spin a bit before the race. this was the first race with signs marking the waves so i had to find something else to be confused about. after call ups i rolled up to the start line while Wyatt was sticking his head into the starting chute, pumping his fist, and yelling "Daaaaaaddyyyyy!!!" again and again. gave him and Henry high fives and waited for the countdown. very small wave took off up the climb. i thought i would be feeling good right off because of a short warm-up. i was wrong. i felt pretty bad, unusually bad. i'm still curious why. i think it was painting all day the day before and the morning right up to when we left. that and a lot of pepsi all week before are the only thing i can think of to create the sluggishness. i kept at it hoping to break out of it. at the end of lap 1 my seat broke. i'm thinking, "ok...

70 minutes. 18.2 Av. 21 miles this morning. waited out a rain for about an hour before starting. plenty of rain so far this year. 2 races down in the series and i have some minor lessons. bottles are better than camelback. camelback is nice until you get to huffing and puffing near the redline. then sucking in hard on a tube is almost the last thing you want to do. i did have the tube bunched up a bit in the pack to shorten the tube. that probably made it harder to get water out but not sure how much better it would have been without doing that. may be worth another try without bunching the tube but definately going to try to stick to bottles amap. replaced the "ergonimic" shaped specialized bar ends with short, straight ones. that was a pretty big improvement. the shaped ones were pretty bad for control and comfort. one of my favorite changes this year has been the low profile, lock-down, Specialized grips. old ones were big and squishy (and worn out). i like the...