The end of Spring...

This weekend is 24hrs of Cool. I could lie and say I have not been obsessing over it the past few days...

...and I could lie again and say I haven't been checking the weather every hour on the hour.

The fact remains its going to be wet. Its going to be cold, well at least for May in California. I have gone over it a dozen times: six pairs of shorts, this and that, rain gear....I am covered. Chris is bringing some clip-on fenders that I ironically gave him amazing amounts of sh&% over a few months back. So, yeah, I think I am set.

No matter how you look at it, its going to be tough, and once I am riding the weather really doesn't matter. Get wet, change clothes. Get cold, change/add clothes. Gets too sloppy change bikes while crew changes the gear on my DeSalvo. No matter how I prepare for this its going to hurt, or at least be tough - if it didn't hurt I wouldn't be pushing hard enough.

The key is living in the moment, that one lap I am on. If I am getting cold, I know warm clothes are 12.5 miles away at most. Everything is about that lap, that climb, that's it. Last year I was golden in that mindset until almost 8a.m. when for one reason or another my concentration slipped and I started doing the math in my hazy mind. The race is hard enough, and to think about how much longer you have to ride makes it that much tougher to do.

The goal, ride each lap hard at a pace I can keep on trucking for a full day, and eating everytime my alarm goes off (every 20 minutes) and drinking what I am told to each lap. I just ride and concentrate on the dirt in front of me. If I can do my part, I have complete faith in my crew to get me through this as fast as my body can do it...or as far as it can go in 25 hrs.

So all this worry about the weather is silly. Its just one more factor that makes this an EPIC weekend. Don't get me wrong, I would love beautiful weather, but "it is what it is"....

Have a great weekend! If you want, come hang out in Cool this weekend!!!