Cleghorn , Wisconsin, September 11th

The last race of the year is coming up. The whole week my legs were completely sour from biking too much during this whole week. Some massages and other care and voodoo did not seem to have helped since, when the race starts and the pace goes up to around 35 mph, all I can think of is Aauw, these legs still hurt like in the good old days when I used to ride the Tour of Antwerp and I climbed on my bike for the 3rd day in a row.

Before this race I told myself over and over and over not to race differently just because I am wearing a state Jersey.
It seems that as soon as I have put on my state jersey I became a famous/infamous person. Suddenly I see the number 2 of the championship giving me a hard time I should be riding PRO in Europe instead of slaugthering innocent Cat 3's in Minnesota. I think it was really funny. He could not believe he lost the state championship against somebody from Belgium. :)
Also, unfortunately I can no longer race anonymous in any pack anymore, which will make things a little harder.

Well...not racing different with the Jersey on seems to be easier said then done, first off all I tried to break away about 15 times at least; and always there was somebody in the peleton bridging up to me as soon as I attacked. However that cannot be an excuse since after a few miles of racing I knew the exact plan for this race; and it was simple, so simple, it just needed to be executed step by step. This race clearly showed there was no one able to break away, since the peleton was missing a few "real better" riders to make a difference, so the preferred tactics would be to do absolutely nothing the whole race and attack with 2 miles to go on the final climb, but that was way to simple and too easy :)

Wearing the jersey for the first time, made me really do very stupid things during the whole race and I payed a huge price for that; when I attacked with around 7 miles to go. I completely blew myself up on an uphill stretch and the peleton just went over me and I just could not follow the pack anymore ( which was about 20 riders strong at that point) It was a good lesson in how not to think you can do all this crazy stuff in the race and still win the race. Anyway, I had a very good workout today, and learned a few new lessons.

Euer,
Joris

The last Race of the Year coming up

The month of September is always a hard month for cyclist racers. As the leafs on the trees start to fall, and the season has already been there for over 8 months, cyclists and especially me want to do some other sports. I really long for going out to play tennis, go for a swim or a run; and leave the bike aside for a few weeks or months. The last couple of weeks though I have stayed focused and kept on training like I did before the state championship. I have 1 more upcoming race to go; which is a WISport race in Wisconsin. The race itself is an Open Category race; which makes it especially interesting for me to measure myself against the regional top riders. The race will be this sunday in Cleghorn, WI.

With the last races of the year being there and a long Minnesota winter to look forward to, I am also going to look more at improving my bike effieciency through more excercises for my core body. It is quite remarkable how big of an impact these excersises already had for me up until this point. And I strongly believe that they can be of alot more help when I would do them a whole winter with off course eye for detail and discipline.

Till Sunday for the race report,
Joris