Time to hit the road.

I've been popping vitamins, anti-inflammatories and anti-depressants like they are candy. My physiotherapy starts in June and I've given up on icing my wrist. My online research has told me that treating RSD with RICE (rest,ice,compression,elevation) is probably not a good idea. No more taping either. I'm going to resume training on the road this Friday and take life one day at a time.

I received a little post card from the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival today. This small piece of paper was conformation documentation for my entrance into the Short and Fat race. It also stated that I've been awarded a preferred start. This was thoroughly surprising to me considering that my race resume is far from impressive and has been mostly non-existent for the last 12 months. A few years ago I tried to get a preferred start into the 40 and was pretty much denied. I'm guessing that they hand out preferred starts for the Short and Fat without much selectivity. That's okay, I'll take it.

The month of June should prove to be very interesting. While I'm waiting for my medical situation to improve, I'll probably do a crit or two. Maybe even a road race. I know very little about racing on the road. Aside from all the duathlons and triathlons that I used to do, my "roadie" career has consisted of three criteriums.

One year I entered the Badger State Games criterium on a whim. The course was pretty cool as it was on Madison's Capital Square. Unfortunately no other women turned out to race so they asked me if I wanted to roll with the Masters 50+ men. I said sure, why not. I thought to myself, how fast can they be? Minutes later a few 50+ year old dudes roll up on 4000 dollar carbon bikes. Shit, this might be interesting. Go.....and we were off. I hung on for about a half of lap and I was dropped on the small uphill on Carroll St. Even though I knew I couldn't catch these guys, I pedaled the shit out of my bike because I have too much pride to give up. A little while later those old guys came around to lap me so I tried to hang on again. I started to notice that there was a large amount of people congregating on Carroll St. UW students, out-of-towners, street people and whoever else started cheering for me in a disproportionately loud fashion. It was nuts. Every lap I went around they were clapping, chanting and screaming for me to keep up with these old men. You would have thought it was the Superbowl. I had an ear to ear smile that day because I was pleasantly amused at the ruckus which my "race" created. I think I was lapped at least twice for the 20 or 25 laps that we did. What I didn't want to tell my over-exuberant fans is that I could have pulled over at any given time, called it a day and picked up my first place medal....because those guys weren't technically my competition.

I also did the Great Dane crits last year and got popped off the pack in both of them. I felt like I was certainly one of the stronger riders, but unfortunately I didn't really have a strategy or know what I was doing. Maybe next month will teach me something.