Streps Run and other races

The past few weeks have been interesting...I've been riding a little, both on and off road, and having a good time doing it.  Nothing huge, just rolling.  Occasionally hitting up the Tuesday night ride to get some intensity, and did the Wildwood TT in St. Louis.  Had a less then stellar result there, not really sure why.  Not that I expected big things, but I felt like I was going pretty decent.  I made a few mistakes, I miss-judged how far out I was from the finish and hit the gas too early and blew up a little and had to recover so I could hit the gas again.  Miss judged where the turn around was.  Dumb little mistakes like that.  Even though, in the grand scheme of things, for the most part I felt good and was pushing what I needed to, and I felt like I handled the course and the gear selection I was using pretty well.  So, on paper results wise, I sucked.  But, I felt mostly good, so I can be happy with that.  Few weeks before that was the Tour of St Louis.  I did the Delmar crit, which I felt pretty good there, too.  It was a nice, wide open, safe course, which is something I need just so I can get a feel for riding in a race situation again.  Pretty much tried to just sit in and not panic, and stay comfortable there.  Which I did.  Did the TT later that day, too, and man did that suck.  It was windier then anything, and I had a really poopy ride.  But, ah well, I really didn't mind...This past week I rolled out with Trevor on Tuesday night to preview the Rhetts Run course for this weekend.  We got caught in a torrential downpour that made riding very tricky.  Not a lot of fun, for sure.  I felt pretty decent, though, so I had a few hopes for the race this weekend.  However, that was all put down when I woke up early Wednesday morning with the worst sore throat I have ever had.  I suffered thru work on Wednesday and Thursday.  I pretty much ate nothing, whenever I would swallow, it was like eating glass and my throat was so swollen closed that I could hardly swallow Advil.  I went to the doctor after work Thursday, and I have strep throat.  Yay.  So, antibiotics, twice a day, forever.  Felt pretty crummy during class on Friday.  Saturday, I started to feel a little better, and started trying to eat solid food again, even though I had to chew it about 30 times to make sure it didn't scrape my throat on the way down.  We had a 1 year birthday party for Brodie on Saturday, which went well.  We had a house full of people and kids, and it was chaotic.  I woke up early on Sunday, thinking I might change my tires on the King since the trails were dry.  I decided not to, and it is a good thing I did.  There were torrential downpours right before the start of the 3 hour marathon race (which I was participating in), and it turned the trails to crap.  My first lap was good, I am usually a slower starter and like to pick up the pace later in the race.  So, the leaders had about 30 seconds on me after the first lap, which was good.  Then things started getting ugly.  The trails seemed like they were slicker, most likely from the rain getting spread out to everything.  And the mud was getting gummy, and my bike was getting packed with slop.  And, I was a little woozy from the lack of food in the previous days.  So, I started running into trees and what not, and taking some really bad lines.  The race kept going down hill for me from there on out, but I still managed to keep it together and did 7 laps, and finished 5th.  And, made some money.  I wanted to quit a bunch of times, but somehow managed to keep going.  






Notice the 2 mtb photos.  The first one is early on in the race, I was still feeling pretty good there.  The second one I was pretty much coming unglued...