Last Weekend - Hillside

Last weekend I packed up the car and drove to Minneapolis. I love passing by the Ritchey Bros auction lots! Theres is one south of the twin cities about 100 miles or so. The lots are so gigantic to hold all those huge tractors and construction equipment! I don't know, that stuff is just so COOL!

I hadn't been back in a while so it was nice to see some friends, one of which I haven't seen since 2005! Always fun to catch up! I rode Murphy - Hanrehan Saturday evening. Its been over a year since I've ridden that course and its really fun - so fast! After that I arrived at a friends house in Lakeville to a healthy slab of ribs from the bbq. I missed it, but I guess it was fun to watch the amount of ingredients going into the whole thing. Good times.

Sunday I raced Hillside Park in Elk River. I, like many others, opted for the Advanced class over the Rec class...which means 2+ laps at race pace! I've never done that before at Hillside. Well...apparently...4 1/2 - 5 hours of sleep is NOT enough and when talking about hydrating up to the race...that doesn't mean drink as much coffee as possible. I struggled. I jumped out to a great start down the road and into the single track, but I hit a wall only about 30 minutes into the race and started thinking about cutting back to only a one lap Rec race. Luckily, I filled my Camelback to the top, because I just started taking in the fluids like crazy and stepped back my effort level for a bit. I was coming to the finish of lap one and had to make a choice. I kept the hammer down and went into lap two thinking this was stupid - but it was a non-points preseason race, so what the heck right??

I'm glad I did. I nearly emptied my Camelback by mid lap two but I had started to come back alive. I ended up passing a couple riders towards the end and I was feeling alright...beat, but not passing out. In the end I was happy with two laps plus the prologue in 1hr 38mins. Great great training race! I'm still feeling it today. Probably some easy riding on the road for today and tomorrow.

First Minnesota series race on Saturday!