Flashback

to 2006 and 2007... before I got hit the "i know it all" level.

Backpedaling a bit to mess with the cronoman and to make this harder to read/follow.

So there's this typical trend. Get excited about something, suck info off everyone actively, always looking for new stuff, new information, new ways to do something.

UNTIL.

You hit a point where stuff starts to click and you get faster and better and success sort of starts happening.

THEN

You hit the I know it all now level. And don't really improve much over the previous season.

And you start buckling down again, but it is harder, and more familiar and you try to add structure, stuff that others with coaches are doing and it sort of works.

But...

along the way, that newbie edge is gone.

What edge? Well some people never lose that edge. The course studying. Reading reports from the years past about the race. Digging around the internet reading everything that has been written about the race, what riders do better there, tire choices, pressures, gearing, number of dismounts.

Granted when you have written about racing on a course three or four of more times you start to be able to picture it.

You can visualize it if you want.

Okay so what's the point?

CSI.

No not the TV show.

THE RACE.

This race was famous, I remember seeing pictures and video of this long before ever venturing up there. It feels like a haul for me, well I guess it only feels long if I'm driving up alone, last year with Essenfeld (fortunately I had someone to drive me home) didn't seem too bad.

So it has this mystique. People either love the race or hate it. I kind of really like it. Maybe doesn't suit me well but they way I'm going this year nothing suits me well so it is a wash and I can like something even if I suck at it.

Damn where was I going?
Oh yeah.

All that study, probably wasn't a bad thing. Reading and re-reading the Marvin Z articles (haven't done that this year and did it in limited amounts last year). I found my Krabbe book in with stuff from my trip to Richmond in the summer of '09 which means I didn't do my annual reading of it in '10. So that whole positive reinforcement of thinking positive and thinking about things I need to work on to be positive and fast kinda didn't happen. Life happens though. Doesn't take much to get you off your game, esp when it isn't your job.

So it really was a two pronged inspiration to get this out of my head in as confusing manner as possible, thinking about taggin this with food just to mess with those who only read those posts.

Prong One. Not really the whole thing, just the mention of C-S's online article database.

And Prong two, the update to CSI. Specifically the mention of the larger course map and the UCI commissaire report. I took a look and got that flash back (to being prepared, not the medical sections flash back to last year). Preparation. Thank god for a welsh miner's skull.

The routine has become too familiar almost. Although for Mansfield and Canton I did quite a bit of visualization. More for Mansfield and then Ron changed the course on me, less for Canton, but I've already mentioned my dumb thing for saturday (dumb or not I still had a blast).

In 2007, at the start line at NoHo. It was cold. Perfect. I had won the race to registration scoring a front row with the rest of the computer jockey/B masters... driving around at the business end of the group was intense. Even if we were going slowly. And what did I just do? I went back in time. Wow. It reads like I wrote it. Weird. Wait I did. Oh and this should be read before that scribblins link.

Yes. NoHo kicks ass. And I held that hole shot for most of a lap, on no sleep, completely hung over and under caffeinated.

First time at NoHo: 2007 Race it on no sleep after drinking WAY too much with my brothers.
Second time at NoHo: 2008 Raced it on the new tubulars until the rear blew out on the first lap and the antibiotics I'd been on for a few days destroyed me "Put it this way. I was more fatigued driving home from Northampton than I was driving home after racing at 24hr of Great Glen."
Third time at NoHo: 2009... okay we don't need to go there today, still fresh in the memory.

But

What comes out each time is how much fun that damn course is. Like the people who designed it know what they are doing or something. It is technical but it flows. It is bitching hard but so much fun. No faking that course.

Time to take myself back to school. Read the articles. Study the courses a bit more. Go back and read about the last races, what did I do wrong and what could I have done better. I've actually got a pretty decent archive. Completely and totally uselessly unsearchable except by date, but the stuff is there, and I really should work on learning from my mistakes.

I wonder if I got to where I was going. Oh. Shit. Habit. I keep meaning to stop doing the double space thing after a period. Seems that's for typewriters and not computers. Oops.

heddwch
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