The blog posts have been sparse this year, to the point that people have requested I write / rant more... So here's a post to keep you all happy!
Last Sunday was a pretty full on day of racing, even if actual race time was only 1hr 40mins! With all the other chamois time, it worked out to be 3hrs and a hair under 300w average. Tantalus went pretty much how I expected, not fast enough, but an OK result. I felt miserable most of the afternoon, and right before the afternoon crit, felt like I was on the knife-edge of yacking. That didn't happen, and I had a pretty good race.
It feels like this year has been race, race, race... and race again. Lots of full weekends. OK, not quite, but compared to previous years of Hawaii cycling, there have been a lot of back to back weekends spent pinning on race numbers. That's nice, but it's also good to have a little break from racing until the State TT on May 2nd so that I can get some more serious training miles logged.
On Thursday I did my usual ride into town from Mililani Mauka, spent 8 til 5 behind my desk at work, then saddled up for a longer night ride. I went from Honolulu, along Nimitz, Salt Lake Blvd, Pearl City, Waipahu, up Kunia Road, took a left towards Wailua, then a right through the Pineapple fields, Wahiawa, then finished up in Mililani Mauka. Not a bad post-workday workout - Total kJ's ended up being exactly 2500.
View from Kunia Road towards Honolulu with rapidly diminishing daylight.
Somewhere between Kunia and Waialua... I think. Riding by braille!
I made use of my Tantalus winnings by ordering the Road to Roubaix documentary which arrived on Thursday. So far I've watched about 35mins of it. Pretty good, but it has a little too many interviews, and not enough riding. Maybe it'll get better...
Road to Roubaix... So far so good. I wonder who will win on Sunday!
There was some discussion about me being added into the 09 Hawaii Cycling Cup, but the end result was that the organizer only wanted to give me points from Tantalus onwards. I'm all for fair racing, and don't believe that points earned in earlier races should have ever been awarded to other racers, so as of now, I'm still not involved. Had all my points been added, I'd currently be sitting in 3rd place overall. If the course was set up for the first 10 riders at Mokuleia, I would likely have added more points to my total putting me into 2nd place GC. The HI Cycling Cup is potentially a great idea, but the screw ups with races and rules dilute any value that it might otherwise have. Whether I am included or not, I don't believe that Mokuleia should have factored into the overall points... The first 10 riders all had messed up times. C'est la vie... What's an blog entry without a bit of mild ranting!
