Missing

My legs.
Last seen May 10th, 2009. Somewhere north of Duluth.
There have been a few reports of sightings, but no solid leads.
Reward if found, please contact with any information you may have.




As many of you know, I had my second attempt at the Nature Valley GP these past few days. Right from the start of the TT on Wednesday morning my legs were not under me. I just don't have the get up and go I did this spring. And it is really starting to frustrate me. I thought I was decently rested, and felt fine going easy, but as soon as hit the throttle things go south.
I got smoked in the TT pulling 4th to last, I was quite disappointed as I know I can go faster. But made it through.

Sucking wind in the rain.

Then the St. Paul Crit, unlike last year it was dry, luckily. Even with that Right from the start I was not feeling very good. And just like last year it was on the straights that I would get gapped. I cornered plenty fast to stay right in there, and even move up, but after a few laps I would simply get gapped on the straights. The legs just would not turn. However, I squeaked by and made it to round 3.
Cannon Falls was thankfully a calm weather day too. The rolling enclosure provided at the NVGP is always fun, makes it much more official. The race was not hard, I just had a good time hanging out in the peloton watching the fields zip by. I got comfortable moving around in the pack which was a change from before, and not being able to move at all. Eventually we came into the finishing circuits, I felt ok. After 3 circuits I lost focus for a second and clipped a wheel in front of me and nearly went down, I did not, but my seat nose went down nearly 45 degrees. I just could not pedal like that and got popped. I was feeling confident that I was going to make it at that point too. Shit... I rolled in with a group a few minutes after the pack. (Unlike last year I did not get lapped).
The circuits gave me confidence that I would make it through round 4. Off we were into the streets of Uptown, I had decent starting position. not super far back. The first laps I felt ok, not having to many problems. Then all of a sudden I could not go, I started getting gapped on the straights again and nothing I could do about it. I just could not pedal. Thus my NVGP bid came to a bitter end.

I am just very frustrated with my lack of performance. This year I have done crits that have close to the same average speed (LaCrosse), and hung out on the front. All I had to do was make it half the race and I would have made it. But nope, I could not even make it 1/3. All the other MN boys had no problems, I know I can hang with them no problem. So why the hell can't I do it now?

I have no excuses for being slow this week. But I have some therioes that I am going to look into. Last year I thought it was because I had not raced enough leading into NVGP, I found that that is not the case as this year I race plenty leading up to it, pretty much as much as I could.
The past week or two I have been sleeping 8, 9 or 10 hours a night, and waking up tired. Perhaps I have a virus of some sort that is not strong enough to show outright, but when I try to race my bike it is enough to stop me from doing well.
Perhaps it is overtraining. The past week.5 I have gone pretty easy. A bit of speed work to try and keep the intensity there, but obviously it's not there so it was a waste. But anyway I did a bit of research and overtraining really does not show itself for at least 3 weeks after the fact. Almost exactly 1 month ago my legs were so tired that I was getting crampy just sitting around. I would consider that overtrained. And now it caught up to me. I bet if I look at my logs from last year, at about the same time I had the same issue... Another thing that leads me to believe the overtraining theory is that I cannot get my HR to go up. My avg. HR in the 6 miles TT was 179, the last truly good race I had was at the LaCrosse crit where my HR was 174 for 65 minutes. Hmmmm... Something is not quite right with that.
It sucks that I have to learn about my body at a race like this. But at least I am figuring it out.

Due to the fact that I have no high end power at the moment. And just want to race my bike. Tomorrow (Sunday) instead of racing in Stillwater like I should be I will be doing a mountain bike race on my CX bike. I'll let you know how it ends up...