Awaiting the Start

This week has gone by so fast, it's amazing. I started this week by working some last minute summer work to help pay some bills. Then before I knew it I was starting teacher year #6 and 110 fresh faces were staring back at me in my classroom. The summer was great and really felt like a long break with all the traveling I did. I was happy to get through the first few days of school and then I remembered that I would be leaving after work on Friday(today - yikes!) to travel to Harrisonburg VA and take on the Shenandoah Mountain 100 Sunday. This week totally flew by.

It wasn't much for a transition but now back teaching, I've tried to keep focused on my training, but there's so much to get set up at work that it's hard to concentrate on anything else. Maybe that's a good thing. By this time last year I felt good going into the SM100 and then slowly grenaded about 50 miles in. Merely surviving the last 50 miles. This year I feel a lot fresher and I'm envisioning each climb and each fantastic(hellish) spot that sticks out in my memory(like the 18 mile climb). Hopefully this distraction may have me a little fresher going into this than I realize. Maybe I'm just desperately hoping for this? Could be...

Any way as the rumors go it's supposed to be, all things being equal(which they never are), that whatever time you ran at the W101 and add 10-15 minutes is the usual time for the SM100. Well 8:48 was my W101 and I'm hoping to cash in some extra credit and delete those 10-15 minutes since the W101 was pretty grimy and slick. So all things being considered, I've convinced myself that a sub 9 hour finish IS doable. Whether the stars align or not is anyone's guess. All I know is that I seem to have the nutrition and hydration fairly well dialed and the bike is dialed. So if both of those two pieces don't let me down I should have an enjoyable day. Either way I'm still craving pizza and brownies at Aid 5 - they better be there!

So we'll have to see how it all goes Sunday. Either way it'll wrap up #5 of the hundies for me this year and my main focus for the year. I'll still be doing some local XC races and hopefully some cross races for fun. I'll have to see as there may be a little addition to my quiver soon as the CX bike is calling my name. There may be bike #8 sitting in my apartment soon. Stay posted for details...