... AND that's a season.

Well, April to September is quite a jump. It's all of the bike racing season, in fact. What happened?

Some crits happened. I won one, to my great surprise. Like every one of the very few W's I've ever posted - it was solo. Because if even a newbie Cat 4 Jr woman had been on my wheel, I probably would have lost. Yes, the sprint is that bad. Yes, I work on it. No, I'm not improving.

Lots of PIR happened. Lots. It wasn't that much fun. Well, helping some teammates win a few times was fun, but often it was boring. So I started doing the Monday Masters races - which was fun. Old guys are slower, and I'm young for an old guy, so I attacked a lot.

Elkhorn happened. My favorite stage race. It was a small field this year but some good horsepower, and I managed to attack the remainder of the pack in the 1rst stage to roll in for 4th behind the 3 leaders. Then I did the worst TT of my life, dropped to the bottom of the results page on GC, and phoned in the crit. On the 4th stage I again attacked the remainder of the pack near the top of Dooley Mtn to come in 4th behind the 3 leaders. Hmmm. Something is off there. But, my teammate Josh destroyed everyone in the TT and held on to a good GC position so for having just a 2 man team in the race, we had some solid results.

Masters Nationals happened. I got 5th in the TT, which was nice, but then got pulled for doping control, which was a new experience. The whole process could be the subject of another post, but since it's a TT and you don't know how you did until well after everyone finishes, I had already gone back to the house and showered, peed, etc before checking the results. So it took about 80minutes to produce a sample, and I barely eked out the required 90ml. I do mean barely. It was like right at the line, thanks to some hard work on my part, and I got the stink-eye from the doping control people for such a meager sample. But they let me go.

The Nationals road race also happened. I got 5th again. And this race I replayed over and over in my head wondering how I could have won it. It blew up on the last lap and I rode into contention, over Archie Briggs (a bastard of a hill) I came across in 3rd with a decimated group behind. Somehow it turned into a group of 6 going for the line and the sprint sucked.

And that's it. All of it. So I stopped riding, started eating, drinking and sleeping in.

Good times.