Hydration vs. Dehydration....

....which one is better?

So I'm getting this written a little late, but at least I'm doing it. Saturday I drove down to Rockford with Baumann to compete in the last RR of the season...Fall Fling #3. First off, I don't know if the midwest knows this, but its OCTOBER!!! Not the middle of the summer. What the hell!?! This weekend was so hot and humid...it was uncomfortable. I mean come on...a man died doing the Chicago marathon on Sunday.

Ok back to the race. Baumann and I got to the race site at about 9:30am with our race going off at 12:35pm. So I just sat around for a bit, tried to do some homework, met with Dan Mendoza (from Purdue), and saw Seth Meyer and Will Nowak (from Northwestern). Dan and I rode a quick lap to see what we were in for and then Will, Seth, Dan and I all went for another lap. This course was extremely boring. It was a 8 mile rectangle course with one or two moderate "hills" on each side. These "moderate hills" were just bumps in the road and weren't hard at all. Everything was big ringed. The only limiting factor in the race was going to be the crosswinds on the 2 longest sides. Oh and we were doing 6 laps...a total of 48 miles.

It was a 1/2/3 race. There were about 15 cat 1/2's and about 45 cat 3's. We started the extremely hot race out kind of slow. There were a couple attacks to test the field, but nothing much at all. The first 2.5 laps were pretty easy. I tried going with an attack at the end of lap 3...it didn't go anywhere. It was brought back pretty quickly. At the end of lap 3 I started getting a little of the cold shivers. Crap...dehydration is setting in. Lap 4 was the hardest. ABD decided to drill it in the crosswind on the 4th side. That broke apart the field to bits and pieces. A lead group of about 10-12 got a good gap. About 4 Cat 3's in front of me decided to give up and I had to chase. There were about 10 of us fighting to get back to the main pack. Me and 2 others did a lot of work to chase done the front group. I may have used a little too much energy to get back, but the 10 of us made it back to the lead group on lap 5. So by this time I was in the lead group of 20 or so, which started out with 60+. I was definitely feeling pretty good about that. However, I ran out of water and the cold shivers were not going away. I got to the end of lap 5 and had to drop out due to dehydration issues. I was kind of angry. So close. But oh well...I know where my fitness is and found out that I have to start drinking a lot more water.

I just wish it was cooler out this weekend. This heat has been killing me....

This week is not really good for bike practice, which kind of sucks. Way too much homework and exams to do this week, but it'll all be done on Friday and then I get a little bit of a break. So next week will hopefully begin some good winter off-season training. February will be here in no time....

Oh and I do have a new team for next year. Looks like I'll be riding for Team Get A Grip Cycling out of Chicago for the 2008 season. So thanks to Jon Tenney for accepting me on to the team. They offered me some good deals and I know most of the guys I'll be riding with. We'll be doing a lot more of the stage races around the country/midwest. Hopefully the program develops me into a Cat 1 rider. I think it will.

Ok...well, its getting late and I still have a little bit of homework to do, so I must go....

Oh, I was planning on taking pictures at the race this weekend...but it just never happened. I'll make sure to take some soon to get this blog un-boring....

Ciao ciao....
Waitey