Updates and other ramblings

So, its been a while since my last post. The last post was about my prep for the State TT, well sadly I was unable to attend due to a family situation that arose the night before. Nonetheless my teammates at Montclair represented well with two riders taking wins in their respective age groups. For June I was scheduled to race a few times at the watermelon crit and prospect park. That did not happen either due to not getting paid at work for a month, so instead I focused my efforts on my training. I basically spent the entire month of June training with my teammates most days of the week. The majority of the guys on my team are masters 35+ and higher, with our coach being a 45+ racer. The benefit of this is that our Tuesday night training race turns into a balls to the wall hammerfest and our Saturday ride into a 15mile free for all. In one month I figured why my collegiate season this year went less than stellar: lack of discipline in training(school work and beer are blame). As a cat.4 my teammates expect a little more from me than most of new members, so naturally I was to improve my fitness and race awareness during my training.

Now that July is here, I finally got paid which I can race again. My first race back was last Saturday at Prospect Park. The turn out was pretty good, with almost 20 additional racers showing up the day of for the cat.4 field. The race wasn't superfast, but their was a breakaway attempt on everylap. This made for constant speed changes on a course that can take its toll after 8 laps of racing. I got myself into the last breakaway, as their was about a lap and half to go. They were already out there for a lap and had a 30second gap on the field. I figured if this was going to be the one to stick, I better try to get into it. I bridged the gap to breakaway, but it seems that move caused a panick or something in the pack as we got caught on the last lap at the top of the hill. I burned a big match to bridge the breakaway, and didn't have much gas to sprint in the end. A few riders at the end of the race told me if had used that effort to bridge the breakaway in the sprint I would have had top 5, but oh well that;s bike racing.

Next on tap for me is the Giro del Cielo in sussex county, I can't climb as well I used to but at the least it will help my fitness for the remaining races on my schedule.