May Day My Way

Another win for HTC Highroad, but that's not Mark Cavendish.

With just two more weeks until Stump Farm—the WEMS event that I expect will be my initiation into the ranks of mountain bike racers—and with a howling wind that would have made for an unpleasant road ride, I took a borrowed Trek Fuel 70 up to New Fane to experience those trails for the first time ever.

I was not disappointed: New Fane proved to be much more to my liking than Glacial Blue Hills.  I immediately understood what my more experienced mountain biking friends describe as “flow.”  Glacial Blue Hills has defied all of my attempts to find a rhythm, but Loops 1 and 2 at New Fane became faster and easier as I repeated them.  (I took just one tour of Loops 3 and 4 today.)  Overall I rode pretty clean.  There was one steep hill on which I lost all momentum and foolishly tried to get out of the saddle.  My rear tire broke loose and I was done.  And there was a right turn at the end of a fast descent that I nearly overcooked.  Fortunately a nearby tree worked in tandem with my left shoulder to put me back on course.  Have I mentioned that I’m really, really inexperienced as a mountain biker?  I’m not looking for results this year; I’m looking for skill development in a competitive environment.

So, I’ve reached the end of my 12-week training plan.  My fitness is OK but not outstanding.  I still need the weather to warm up before I will hit my stride.  Stump Farm is not a super-technical course, but I will continue to work on bike handling skills during the next two weeks.  I do need to add fitness, though, and I won’t completely abandon the road bike in the meantime.  I’m game for a Thursday evening road ride if there’s still a demand for it in West Bend.

Today began with a live webcast of the Rund um den Finanzplatz Eschborn-Frankfurt.  I know maybe 100 words of German but that didn’t matter.  The video quality was excellent and the race came down to a huge bunch sprint.  Today will end with Versus’ same-day broadcast of the final stage of the Tour de Romandie.  We’re getting into that sweet time of the year when there’s always something going on.