2012 Halloween Cross

Team Extreme's Jeff Wren hits the gas on the uphill barrier section at Washington Park.

My 2012 racing season is over.  Finally and absolutely.  Last weekend’s mixed emotions have been replaced by this weekend’s undeniable realization that I am burned out.  I placed 20th out of 30 today in the Cat 4 Masters 45+ field at Halloween Cross in Milwaukee.  But I didn’t deserve even that lowly placing; two of the top three guys in the series retired from the race with mechanical issues, and they were way ahead of me when misfortune struck them.  That makes two really poor results on consecutive Saturdays and I’m just done.  I need some time away from competition.  This was my 11th straight weekend of racing and I have lost my edge both physically and mentally.  The offseason starts now.

But a break from competition won’t mean a wholesale hiatus from cycling.  I might even spend some time on the mountain bike in November, looking for further improvements in my technical skills.  This year I felt like I had the fitness to perform reasonably well at the next level in WORS, but sometimes my technical skills seemed inadequate even for a beginning racer.  How well I develop those skills will have an enormous bearing on my results when I resume racing next May.