Taking a Break from Racing Part 2 By Jeremy Cummins

Hello all! Well I'm writing this shortly after completing my second race of 2011 and I'm happy to say that I manged a better results than the previous week although it was still not great. I had a better start but my starts are never strong in Expert and I have to rely on my strong 2nd and 3rd laps if I'm going to make advances in a race. I manged to hold on to the lead group for about half of the first lap but then I ran out of gas. The same thing started to happen shortly after this and I was caught be the groups that were released a few minutes after us although it wasn't as bad as before. In the Canada Cup things were a bit different and we didn't get to race with the elite men and women so it was hard to gauge how bad it was for me other than my dismal time. This time around we did get to race with them and under normal race conditions (me being fit) I catch the elite women not far into the first lap and I'm normally lapped by the top 2 or 3 elite men right at the very end of the race. These men are active World Cup racers and I have no problem letting them fly by to the finish. This time around I was caught on my second lap going on third and I never was able to catch the women; this was a good indication as to where I was standing. There are other racers from other groups released after us that I know that would never see me in an O-Cup race that were able to catch me right on the first lap (normally I pulled away and posted better times). This was disturbing to me although I was clearly much faster than the previous week. As I mentioned in the previous blog I was saying that it would take me about the entire season to regain my fitness and confidence again so to have an improvement like gaining a spot and shaving about 15 minutes off my time made me feel hopeful that I'm on track.

As the race got under way I was able to stay with the group for a while, my legs burned a bit but not too bad and I thought that I might just have a good race. As time went by I slowed and began to be caught by the groups starting after us and it got a bit frustrating for me but I pushed on. As I began to have a bit of space I was able to speed up a bit and I started to have lots of fun for once. I also noticed that my hill climbs were very strong and I attacked most of them out of the saddle and in a higher gear. My weak points were on the single track and emerging from them to the dual track; I was slow coming out and it took time to pick up speed. My recovery after an effort and on the dual track is where I normally pulled away from others although my single track has always been slowest but coming out on the dual was where I really made time; but not here. The rest seemed to be strong but I continually was caught and passed with ease even though I was in full effort mode; I even had a super-strong finish out of the saddle and really pushing hard. I think what happened was that I felt like I was going fast but really I wasn't and this is going to be my most difficult obstacle as I feel good but really I'm still sucking ass.

So, in short, I'm going to have the most trouble with the mental part of thinking I'm going fast when not, getting my recovery back after a hard effort (hill or single track) and my power back on the flat dual track.

Buckwallow is a month away so I'm going to start the Wednesday Night Races at Hardwood Ski and Bike and see what else I can do to get out there.

I'll post again when I start these races.

Taking a Break from Racing Part 2 By Jeremy Cummins

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