Racing season is back...

Hohum... Time for the Ashland Spring Thaw. Actually this is usually a fun time - see people you haven't seen in a while, nice weather, etc. Decided to make a weekend of it, head over Fri nite, race Sat, and ride somewhere Sun.

[Hmm a week later and I still haven't finished this... writing about racing is now tiresome - it's the same old shit over and over. The races are still a blast, but the stories starting to repeat]
Anyhow I camped out Fri nite at my usual spot - well, been there once before - at the top of the pass on Route 66 between Klamath Falls and Ashland. The mega snow pack made me think I'd be camping on snow - and sure enough when hit the turn off at 10:30 pm or so, there were banks on either side of the dirt road that leads to the reservoir. They apparently plow it though, so kept going to see what I'd find. Well, tons of fishing cabins and other signs of habitation. Found a pullout on the West side of the fake lake on the other side of the road - spotted a somewhat dry and fairly even patch of ground up in the woods a bit, and setup the tent. It got cold quick, but had time to quaff a beer and play a little guitar under the stars.
During the night was serenaded by various wild bird sounds, especially at dawn when the waterfowl went nuts. Headed for race by 7am, and got there in time to get to the free parking slots. Awesome day shaping up as got ready for the early 9am slot.

As mentioned many days earlier, course reroute due to snowpack - so 2 laps of shortened course. Sounded a bit lame, but this was the best version yet, as got to do the awesome singletrack descent twice. 2200 feet of climbing up the fireroad each time was somewhat labourious, but worth it.

Was eager to see how I would fare with my new training regimen, or lack thereof. Sure enough, started to cramp on the 2nd lap, and had to go into survival mode on the climb. Still able to enjoy 2nd downhill though. I dropped into the bottom 3rd of the class, oh well.

So yeah my new training idea is to not do any training, which was growing tiresome. Unwilling to increase training time, in an attempt to compete for podium spots in the difficult Expert 40+ class, I decided to do no training, to see what this would feel like. Well, so far it feels like cramps ! The racing is just as intense - I go all out - but did not have much finishing kick. But it's not like I sit around on the potato, eating couches and playing video games - I'm still riding a bunch and getting in 8-10 hours of miscellaneous exercise a week. Just no weeks and weeks of doing intervals, sprints and whatnots. Well, I did do some intervals up Pilot Butte last week, like I do often during the year to measure fitness, and my times were down almost 8% from last year, which is quite a chunk of time if you extrapolate it over a 2 hour race - 10 minutes or so. I figured last year b4 Spring Thaw I'd put in 26 training days of long rides and intervals, and this year did about 6, of which 3 were kind of half-assed.

The post race raffle was annoying as didn't win anything, so felt like a loser. They had enough prizes to give everybody something, but often threw 3 or 4 prizes into 1, and then put even the winners back into the main draw for the grand prize bike frame.

Was hoping to hang in Ashland overnight, hit the Biker's Bash and maybe go riding somewhere the next day - but no plan developed, and going to ChrisS's house for dinner seemed like a better plan - so did that, and had a great ride the next day at Brice Creek - though the intense climbing did sear my legs good.