the battle of schenectady

I'm scared. Really scared. This season I've stepped up my game by actually training, and have been getting a lot of good indications from the power tap.

Five minute power? Way up.

Two minute power? Way up.

Results? Not up.

This means the amout of pain and suffering I'm going to have to endure to actually do better in races is going to be a lot. Yikes.

I was hoping, that given my new found training time, and actual indications that I'm a lot stronger than this time last year, I would maybe place higher in races. Strangely, it seems that everyone else is just faster too.

I've been doing intense calculations the last couple days, looking at results from the first few races this year and then races the last couple years. This is what I discovered: I'm finishing a lot closer to the winner then in the last couple years. It used to be that I would be 3-5 minutes behind the winner and place somewhere between 10th and 20th place.

This season, I'm 1-2 minutes behind the winner, still slotting in 10th-20th place. Which is awesome, because I'm apparently a lot closer to the fastest racers in my category, but not awesome, because apparently a bunch of other people stepped up the game as well.

Now I'm going to have to rethink the strategy in hopes that I can get some other edge that will boost me up another 5 or 6 spots. In no particular order here are the potential ways I can get even faster this week:

1. doping, obviously. Now, I don't know where to get dope. And I don't have any money to buy fancy things like EPO or my own pre-stored blood, but I do have a blender and many many bananas at my house. What I'm thinking is that I can blend up a lot of bananas and some protien mix and maybe add a lot of red bull and then some multi-vitamins then store it in a camelback bladder in my basement for a few days, then drink like a gallon if it right before the race. I'm pretty sure this would make me substantially more successful.

2. same as number 1, but instead of me drinking it, I get the 10 racers in the field who keep beating me to drink a bunch right before the race. I bet this helps me place higer for sure.

3. Stop racing completely. Yeah, it may seem like stopping racing is the opposite of getting better results, but that's a short sighted way to look at things. Basically, by stopping now, I would win the race to start another obscure expensive and ridiculious sport. I'm thinking I could be top ten in a goat race next week if I switch right now.

4. goat race? really?

In conclusion: here's a couple pictures from the hard fought Cat Four and Juniors Race this weekend: