Gateway Cup and other shiiiiiiaaaatt!!!

Well, what had been a hopeful weekend to improve on the previous weekends roadraces and crash has been anything but. My weekend started off ok, but still hadn''t done any type of recovery from the races the previous weekend. I woke up Wedensday afternoon and decided to go for a short ride. It ended up being a short three hour ride, more on this later. So now on Thursday I went to see Dr. Crane to check on my ankle that's been giving me some tendonitis pain. He used his trusty ultrasound machine to look around my ankle. I thought I had torn ligaments several years ago which I thought was causing all the pain. As it turns out, the ligaments were in tact, but my perroneal tendon was likely torn. He said what's normally 2-4 mm's was like .2 mm's, wow!!! Hopefully a little rest(yeah, right) and a round of PRP shots in both my ankles will do the trick.

Now, to the races. I was hoping to just survive Fridays race at Lafeyette Square. There was like 148 guys listed at the start line. By far, the largest field I've ever raced in. All previous battle scars bandaged up and I was ready for action. The race went ok for the first couple laps until going into turn three. Somebody flatted several riders in front of me causing a few guys to go down. Everyone started fanning out and I just did the same. Wrong move, I got barrelled into from behind causing me to hit the guy in front of me. I never did actually go down, but my bike did. When I picked it back up both rims (Easton EA90SLX's) were taco'd so riding back to the pit was not an option.....so I ran the half mile back(perfect, triathlon training) and got some sweet Zipp 404's and I could definitely tell a difference right away from my standard wheels. I sure didn't want to give these back. Anyways, several laps later, not feeling it, I decided to call it a night. I only reopened the wound on the hip, a little blood soaked through the shorts, but it was ok. The next day, I looked at my bike and as it turned out, my bike never made it into the big chainring. Somehow the cage was lower and would hit the big ring when trying to shift up. With all the bad luck, I figured my body was telling me it was time to take a break and skip Saturdays race also. Well, being as stubborn as I am, I ended up going to Saturdays race only to bow out after about 15 minutes. My legs were just not recovering when they had a chance, they were shot. I felt like I was working my ass off and yet not making any ground, in fact I was losing ground. I had to head to work right after the race, so I just called it a day and headed into work.

So, basically my highlight of the weekend was a three hour ride that seemed to also be what did me in for the Gateway Cup races and my fantasy football drafts. Tony Romo better have one hell of a season, that's all I can say. I also ruined a nice set of wheels that I propably won't get back any time soon. Oh well, I had a pretty good run for a while until these last several weekends. Luck and fitness were definetly not on my side. Two crashes, lots of donated skin to MODOT, actually INDOT, one flat, and four DNF's in the last six races is definetly not how I wanted to end the season. I could say I've had a lot going on lately, moving, racing on three hours of sleep, doing big rides before races, nagging injuries, but you know what they say, excuses are like assholes and everyone's got one. I rode throughout the whole winter never really taking a break and now I guess it must be catching up with me. Alrighty then, back to bed, hopefully I can catch a few more ZZZ's.