UT CX #1

I thought I would prepare for this year's cyclocross season a little differently. About a month out from the first race, instead of starting a solid training block, I decided to spend 9 days off the bike, throwing in some international business travel.

All kidding aside, a trip to London is not to be missed, especially if there's an expense account associated with it. There's tons of things to see and do in the city, and as I'd covered a lot of ground last year, I took a geek side trip to Greenwich. I am guessing not everyone gets worked up about seeing old nautical instruments at the Maritime Museum, and John Harrison's chronometers at the Royal Observatory.

If having one's snapshot taken at the International Meridian is not the height of geekdom...

Then resetting the GPS coordinates on your phone must be.

By the way, you might want to draw the shades, as they discovered Uranus with this...

After returning from London, I of course hit the bike with several high intensity workouts. Not satisfied with feeling flat and tired, I went out to Wheeler farm with Mike G. and Tyler F. for some hot laps on the cross bike. Not content with being completely smoked by these guys, I decided to smack my head into one tree, and crash into another tree. I'm not sure how I scraped my back but I do remember lying stunned on my back for a bit trying to work out if I had managed to kill myself in a particularly stupid way. Luckily I got off easy with some mild abrasions on the back and a chainring puncture on the back of my knee (again, no idea how that happened).

Anyway, towards the end of the next week the legs were coming back, and the power numbers were looking like I was getting my form back.

Unfortunately I came down with a substantial cold which ended up with a nasty sinus infection the week before the first race. Not sure how this could come about given a strict athlete's diet, involving precisely measuring out how much bacon goes on my nachos.

So while I felt like hell come Saturday, I decided I would go on out to the first cross race just to pick up the number and get back into the routine. And while it was all I could do to avoid getting DFL, I have to admit it was super fun - even if I couldn't hang with the gang for more than the first lap.

BTW Conor did his first cross race, riding with the nine and under crew. Apparently he did quite well.

Conor: "What place did you get, daddy"?

Daddy: "I don't know... 12th"?

Conor: "You got 17th. I got 3rd place, daddy."