A 35mph motorcycle leadout and a bit of a tailwind is the very best way to stoke the fantasy that you’re a lot faster than you really are
It’s August now, and we’re bottom bracket deep in crit season (gross). This is the time of year that I live for. Long days with late races, hot weather, top end workouts, no worries about mileage, porking up a bit if we feel like it; in short, heaven.
It’s also the time of year when I feel like it’s really easy to accidentally find oneself smack in the middle of a mental burnout.
If you’ve been riding since November or January or whenever – or if, like me, you’ve been riding since 5 years ago – with no real time off the bike, and no break from thinking about and living for racing, the needle on the warning gauge for deciding-to-stop-giving-a-shit is creeping steadily towards the red. In the past, I’ve remedied this issue with strategic time off and a couple skipped races, once my mental state had already deteriorated. The past couple years, however, I’ve found that my results were quite a bit more positive if I took a more preemptive approach to burnout. For me, that means backing away from the road bike just a bit.
Enter weekday MTB rides.
Tiny 29ers look delightfully like little monster trucks
Cary Millionaire does not pork up during crit season, or ever
Lingwood, looking all hell of shy/surprised/cute-as-a-button!
Average speed of 8mph. A crit this ain’t.
Gotta keep the love for road bike races aflame with a little MTB strange on the side, you know what I’m saying? It does magical things for the brain. Anybody else wake up in a hot sweat from dreams of a Speedvagen mountain bicycle?
Anyway, it’s Friday afternoon, so I’m out. Hope to see everybody out at the Franz Bakery “Criterium” tomorrow!
XOXO,
The Tiniest Sprinter
PS: Couldn’t bring myself to brag in the main body, but: this and this. Not a bad weekend to be a Gentle Lover!
PPS: This has been in my head on a nonstop loop courtesy of Mandy Bootz, so now I’m putting it in yours. Is this butt rock? I’ve never felt comfortable applying that term correctly.
Water bottle on bottom of downtube? Yuck. Like the Caddy big time.
Comment by Carl — August 4, 2012 @ 7:34 pm
Yeah, that under-bottle is a real bummer. Niner say it was a favor to me so that I have the option to run a QR seatpost clamp and drop my post without it hitting the bottle bosses on the seat tube. I say I’m lucky if I ever get to drink out of that bottle before it’s got smooshed banana slug goop and/or horse crap all over it.
Comment by tiny — August 5, 2012 @ 7:38 am