What To Do When Your Start Time Is Delayed.

You eat your pre-race dinner the night before and have the perfect breakfast. Then spend the rest of the day with your feet up and preparing you gear. Race time is at 3:30, the main show of the day and everyone is there. So at 2:00 you eat whatever it is that will fuel your tank but not weigh you down for the race. Next you pack your bag and do a final check of your equipment and off to the race you go. When you get there you find out the race has been delayed an hour. Now what? All this careful preparation and your detailed pre-race ritual has been thrown a loop. Today was no big deal because it was a low-priority CRIT and I only live a 5-minute ride from the venue. I was still worried about coming down from my carefully timed caffeine buzz and I needed to eat more food. What would you do in this situation?

I delayed my warm up, ate a Clif Bar and drank more of my drink mix. It seemed to work pretty well but I still got dropped from the lead break quicker than my senior prom date's dress. Donald and I went about 10 minutes into the race and were soon joined by a group of 6 containing Vitamin Cottage and Health Net riders. Once these guys started driving it my lack of interval training started to show and off the back I went. I was soon caught by the chasing peloton and rode with them for most of the race. Team Einstein riders Brad White and Daniel Matheny rode hard at the front helping to control the field. With 8 laps to go I attacked just before the main field got lapped and a group of 6 came with me to finish the race to 20 or so.