Ready for Blast On

 I've all but definitely decided my next race is the Belltown Throwdown in Easthampton, CT, roughly two weeks from now.  It's good to (almost) have a sure date, so I can wander through my world of misdirected training with a little direction, or at least a sense of where I'm headed, maybe.  Physical efforts over the past few weeks have been a bit of a hodgepodge, even by my non-standard standards, from my ill-prepared running of the 7 Sisters trail race to the following half week of concerted recovery so I could once again walk normally.  After that, two weekend adventures away from home were terrific fun and good for logging miles that I'll never write down, but I've been a little shy of intense efforts on the bike, and given that what I lacked at Secret Squirrel was speed, not endurance, yes, I've been doing it all wrong.  Good there's no longer anybody paying me to get this right.

The landscape of New England mountain bike racing has changed in many ways since I last raced regularly sixteen years ago, and notably, there are far fewer races on offer.  "Back in my day," we used to have a race every weekend, sometimes two, and maybe even a choice of different events on the same day.  I'm not sure if it's time or Covid, some combination of those two, or something else all together, but mountain bike racing seems like more a twice-a-month affair these days.  When there was lots of racing, once into the season, my weekly training was more an exercise in recovery and maintenance, with the lion's, tiger's and bear's share of hard efforts coming with a number plate strapped on my bike, but these days, the option of racing into fitness just isn't there.

I'm actually quite happy with this situation.  While I'm excited to give racing another go with some new challenges and objectives, I don't want it to dominate my summer in the way it once did.  If that means learning how to push on my own, so be it, and to that end, I tried riding hard yesterday.  In the past, I'd do most training on a road bike because it was difficult to control efforts in the woods.  When riding technical trail, there are invariably points that push the legs if pushing the bike uphill is to be avoided.  Also, it's just plain fun to ride a mountain bike fast, so now, to go hard, I go trail riding.  In yesterday's case, that was an hour and a quarter at race pace around the canal trails in Belchertown, book-ended by a twenty-five minute transit on either side the effort.  Add that all up, and it comes to just over two hours of riding.

Hmm, two hours, I want more.  Fortunately, last night the NCC Trail Blasters junior mountain bike program came to town, or more specifically, a twelve minute ride down my street, so after a quick dinner, I was back on my bike and rolling down the road to meet Craig and Tom and their gang of five young riders for a romp through the Batchelor Street trails.  As described before, it was a chance meeting my freshman year of high school that led me to mountain bike racing and ultimately much of the life I've been fortunate to live.  Once I found that scene, there were a number of people who took a genuine interest in the junior racers, helping get me to the races, giving a bit of skills coaching, or just offering encouragement as I sweated my way around a course, and following their example, I've tried to offer something to the waves of next-generation riders that have come behind me.  Plus, kids on bikes are just a hoot, so I found another two hours on the bike last night, if not going all that fast, having a complete Blaster!