I'm back!

I've been MIA because I've lacked the motivation. So now that I have two races under my belt for 2013 I'm taking a stab at updating my blog. 

Two of my favorite races: Poor College Kids and Boulevard. Poor College Kids is the road race where I fell in love with road racing. This year the organizers changed the course eliminating the fast descent and moved the course closer to Santa Maria (Sisquoc to be exact), a beautiful location. The UCSB cycling team did a fantastic job organizing this race with their well marked course and smooth registration process. Our very own B4T9 teammate, Amy Benner, placed 1^st at this race.

For me it was a hard race and I finished strong on the uphill climb although I did get dropped from the group on the first loop on the climb. Those hill surges kill me! I worked with another racer from a different team for the 2^nd lap and that was fun. It's always nice to have someone to finish the race.  I experienced some negative self talk in my head about feeling like crap and wanting to come. This was hard but I quickly stopped those negative voices from getting me down & focused on finishing the race. For some reason, I can always finish strong and it makes me wonder if I need to push myself harder up front but then my legs can only take it so far. I'm working on improving my efforts on the hill surges. 

Boulevard road race, I changed my attitude. I went in with the goal of staying with the group as long as I could. The descents made for the biggest challenge for this race. I fear descending in a large pace group and I experience stomach knots due to my nerves. This stems from my experience last May at Mariposa Stage Race with the loss of our B4T9 sister, Susanne Rivera. I will just need to work through and I’m really not sure how. It’s important to feel confident during any bike race because once you are instilled with fear you've already lost. The other important lesson was to stop comparing myself. I am where I need to be and I just need to accept that.

The best part of racing is hanging out with my B4T9 sisters. Kudos to my dearest friend, Rachel, on her first road race. She picked one of the hardest road races as her first one. 

My goals for this year in terms of racing are to focus on the Belgium Waffle Ride in April & the Mt. Everest Challenge Stage Race in August.

Next race: Madera Stage Race.