Race Ready

The Geekgrl and I have been in CdA since Monday and have been taking it really easy. I have been sleeping hard and yesterday I even took two long naps in the middle of the day. If nothing I’ll be well rested.

Monday we drove into town having left Bozeman, MT that morning and as soon as we arrived we dropped our stuff off at our rental house and went and drove the bike course and took my bike by a local mechanic who was recommended to me by Al. The guy is fantastic and has already worked on three Outlaw bikes. I will dub CycleMetrix the official New Mexico Outlaws bike mechanic of Ironman CdA.

The bike course was a bit of a surprise in that there was more climbing than I had expected and the climbing is kind of broken up from the descents so it’s not like you can go screaming downhill and use some of the momentum to get part way up the next hill rather you have to go downhill, start breaking, make a 90 degree turn and then start climbing. There is at least one climb where you descend, turn, climb, turn and climb again. There is a one descent that looks like it could be really fast and it takes place on a very narrow road and has a lot of twists and turns, which made me think that you would have to take it slowly but I don’t know. One thing I learned after driving the Silverman course is that turns feel a lot harsher, a lot sharper, when you are driving them in a car versus ridding them on a bike.

I won’t lie, after taking a look at the bike course I was pretty disappointed. I was looking for a fast time and was taken aback by the climbing and the nature o the climbing. My fellow Outlaws will understand what I mean when I say that there are some Placitas caliber climbs out there on that course, climbs from the route I refer to as “The Punisher.”

However, the course IS NOT The Punisher, is not at an average elevation of about 6000 feet and does have a substantial amount of flat to slightly flat areas so I’m starting to feel good again about my prospects for a fast time, maybe not sub-13 but I’m feeling pretty good about something closer to the 13:30 range and I do not think a sub-13 is out of the question by any means.

All the race stuff aside, the town is beautiful and the people seem friendly. The scenery is fantastic and the sun doesn’t set until about 9:30 at night and rises at around 4:50 in the morning, which I LOVE. However, as the Geekgrl pointed out to me that means that the sun hardly shines during the winter and I know it’s cold and snowy here so sorry CdA the Geekgrl and I will return to our beloved New Mexico, the land of 350 or more days per year of sunshine.