Its about 8 weeks until Canada - Crazy thought.

I just spent last weekend in the hurt box.  Not sure that I enjoyed it much but I did get some awesome mental toughness training out of it.

Day 1 - Saturday 23rd May. Preston Mountain Classic Handicap Road Race. About 73km in distance.  My 2nd road race for the year I was a little scared of riding in a big bunch of around 25, knowing that we would hit the pace from the word go...and with Hills.  My hill climbing is feeling pretty weak at the moment after the solo 24 hr effort. So we started out staying together and a with a few times of nearly being dropped, I continued to work hard to stay on.  My gosh the politics in a bunch.  Especially Mr. Specialised Pink Jersey, he was the ring leader and he was totally onto but rubbed some people up the wrong way for sure.  I could deal with it and quite enjoyed the lack of responsibility - just ride attitude that I could employ.

I was in the 14 min bunch, I think there were 3 more bunches after me for the Masters, Womens Race.  The top girls were in the 9 min bunch so the pressure was on to keep the gap for as long as possible. 

As I said, all was going great until the much talked about hill climb.  After 60 km's of pushing 53/19 and 100-110rpm along undulating terrain, we hit the gradual incline of 2% and my legs started to die.  Then the incline increased to a hill climb not unlike Tawonga Gap but shorter.  By now, I had lost the bunch and whilst I wasnt resembling a picture of pain, it was only because I just could not push my legs any faster or harder!  More work needed in that area for shizzle.

 

...and then some more hurt as I was approaching the top of the climb. I was totally unaware of how far I had to go. I thought the race was 82km long, and had no idea how many leg sapping climbs there were to go.  Ahhh...if only I had of known that the race was about to finish at the 73km mark. Knowing the course helps heaps.

End result, heaps of fun and I am coming back for more!