Yet more challenges

The few of you who have read this for a while know that Jenn got bitten by the century bug last year. Her first hundred-mile bicycle day was on the Pottershop Century that is part of the Old Kentucky Home Tour. A couple weeks later, there was the Louisville Bicycle Club's "Pretty good first century" ride, which we also did.

Interest piqued by those experiences, and perhaps some interest in getting me on the bike more, led her to suggest that we go play with the Mad Dogs yesterday morning--despite that it meant her getting out of bed before 8:00 on a Sunday morning, which is often a challenge.

Yesterday's ride wasn't a century--good thing--but rather a time trial that serves as the prologue for the Tour de Mad Dog, a series of twenty-some-odd century rides through the LBC Touring season.

While the contest of Tour de Mad Dog depends on things other than how fast one rides ("stage winners" are selected by a drawing at the end of the ride), contestants still have to ride a fair number of century rides to stay in the game. We'll see how our cycling year goes, but apparently our goal is, in part, to complete the Tour de Mad Dog challenge at some level.

The time trial was short--less than six miles, which didn't even reach the standard of a 10K. It was billed as challenging, but given the terrain, it was one of those "it's as challenging as you make it" time trial courses. Neither of us were in top form for such an effort, but we didn't do badly, either. Our time--16:56--put us in the middle range of riders. Our legs feel good this morning, suggesting to me that we didn't put every ounce of effort we could have into the race. That's okay--I'm happy that my legs feel good this morning.

During our race, I admittedly wasn't as focused on racing as I might have been. My mind kept wandering over to the place where I pondered putting forth an effort like what I was doing, for about that length of time, then doing it again three-quarters of an hour later, repeating that cycle for eight or ten hours, then sleeping while my other four teammates did that for their shift. That's how the Team Type 2 and Team Type 1 racers will do RAAM, while I drive one of the RVs the team and crew will use as portable sleeping quarters during the race.

I'd have to train myself quite a bit to do that...