Update Time

Alrighty then. So it's now been almost 3 weeks since the last race at Ringwood. It's also been 12 days since I got out of the hospital after what the doctors think was viral meningitis. Things are looking up. I'm back to the swing of every day life. I would say though that I'm not fully recovered from the hospital visit but I'm getting there. The daily chores are fine once again, I just feel the setback the most in the top end of my riding. Wednesdays are cyclocross practice days and I was at practice again this week after 2 weeks off. It was still good and I had more pop than I thought I would but the top end was definitely lacking a bit. Overall pretty satisfied with how much power I could put down and hang with a fast group, but still not 100%. I knew for efforts like this it would take a bit to get back to where I was pre-hospital.

The good thing is that I'll be riding quite a bit this weekend and it should help me get the fitness back. On tap for tomorrow is a hard 90 minute workout followed by probably the last century of the year. 6+ hours is on tap as I'm going to ride from my apartment and try and visit PA. Then a nice CX workout on next wednesday and my first true cross effort of the season at the Jamesburg/HPCX cross race. This was one of my favorites from last season.

HPCX was probably my favorite as it was just a fun course with a couple of nice MTB elements thrown in for some roadie entertainment. The best part had to be the section where the bike had to be shouldered on flat ground because the 6-8" of mud was IMPOSSIBLE to ride. I did attempt it the first two laps but that was pointless. It's also fairly close to north jersey so a lot of the local mtb'ers come out to throw their hat in the ring. It's great to see some of those familiar faces throwing down in the mud.

Next up after HPCX is the state championship cyclocross race at Hidden Valley. Hopefully these next few efforts will be enough to bring back to top end and let me do pretty well at the state championship race. At this point the focus is just to do the best I can in each race as I missed the first 3 of the series which pretty much kills any intent of doing well in the overall. So actually that could make each race more entertaining as it's only a single consequence. More fun to come...