Monday, February 28, 2011

Cat 1 Upgrade?

Okay you clamoring race report fans, I'm afraid you'll have to wait just a little longer.

The lovely missus and I just got home from the Callville Bay Classic and I had enough energy to unpack, then - drumroll please - officially file for my category 1 upgrade.

Hopefully I followed all the rules correctly and didn't have a math fail - I think I qualify. For those following along at home, here's a quick review of how it went down:


6 pts - 2nd of 41 2+, 2010 Madera Stage Race Road Race M35+123, 3/14/2010
1 pt - 5th of 21 2+, 2010 Menlo Park Crit M35+123, 4/11/2010
1 pt - 6th of 55 2+, 2010 35+ District Crit Championships, 5/2/2010
2 pts - 4th of 21, 2010 Colavita NorCal Gran Prix E2, 7/17/2010
3 pts - 2nd of 14, 2010 Copper Town Square Circuit Race E2, 7/31/2010
3 pts - 2nd of 16 2+, 2010 CCCX Fall #2 P123, 9/4/2010
2 pts - 5th of 56, 2010 Folsom Challenge Crit P12, 9/11/2010
1 pt - 6th of 15, 2010 Henleyville RR P12, 9/19/2010
2 pts - 2nd of 9 2+, 2010 CCCX Fall #3 P123, 10/2/2010
2 pts - 4th of 21 2+, 2011 Cal Aggie Crit M35+123, 1/29/2011
1 pt - 3rd of 8 2+, 2011 CCCX Spring #1 P123, 1/30/2011
6 pts - 10th of 56, 2011 Callville Bay Classic E2 GC, 2/27/2011
--
30 pts, holee crap.


I can't even tell you how many near misses I had for points - I've been one spot away from getting a point something like 4 times? It is really amazing to me how difficult it is to get them when you're focusing on it.

I'm looking forward to a different racing style that involves a lot less accounting and a lot more go for broke.

But first I'm looking forward to what I think will be a positive response to the upgrade request, a lot less time pressure, and a new family member on the way.

Some time in the next couple days I'll try to write up a "what I did during the off-season" report where I'll chat about how I upgraded my engine a bit, and how things played out the last month.

In the meantime - check me out in the NCNCA Point Series quickly (2/28/2011), I'm 20th M35-123 and 5th P12 until they update the standings with results from a bunch of races I didn't do, dropping me down :-)

Cheers

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it's *almost* a race report...

Anonymous said...

We're coming up on a year, Mike - when are we going to get the full report????

Mike Hardy said...

I know! It's ridiculous. All I have to say in my defense is that it's brutal trying to *be* a Cat 1 and have a happy baby and a happy wife. I always pick training over blogging anyway. All I have to offer just this instant is the result of my endurance training pre-racing season, I basically got a gold star from my coach, woot:

"got in a huge day today. 6 hrs, 4200 kj 196 avg watts

nice maintenance of cardiovascular endurance with de-coupling around 3600 kj at 204 w avg at that point and good amount of ME. You've done a good job taking care of this side of the fitness equation. This is as much endurance capability as I would need to see out of a higher hour athlete so you are ready to start moving forward and start doing some higher intensity stuff along with the racing coming up to sharpen some more."

Which I think means it's time for a lot of intense "weakness leaving the legs", i.e., suffering :-)

I'll try to post some lessons learned some time - I have learned a lot - hopefully this year??