The weather was
exceptionally good before I left for Texas, so it usually means pay
back later on...Which was the case in the two weeks following my
return from Cuba...It started with max temperatures of 10-12, which
is slightly below normal...But it got worse and worse to a day max of
5-6 degrees on the second week after my return, with lots of rainy
days...The result is that I barely manage to squeeze 110km in the two
weeks following my return...Which I had planned to use for
intervals...Worse, I needed to get my winter gears out of the closet
to bike outside...I could have re-installed my indoor bike trainer,
but I barely had the will to do it in winter, there was no way I
could muster my courage to do it after a week in Cuba!
I did my first race on
April 29 in very cold weather (1 degree celcius..I coldest I ever
rode my bike under any circumstances...) with strong cross-wind and
had my worse result to date (still pretty new at this..Started last
year with 3 races)...I got a DNF after 65km out of 75km....I was
cold, tired physically and mentally... I was likely the first one to
get dropped of the main peloton (I was first at something at last!
:-( ) after less than 10 minutes of strong cross-wind as I was unable
to get into the echelon...Having done no warmup at all was certainly
not a good idea...I tried to survive by latching to groups from older
category that started after our group...While I managed to do so with
one group for 4 laps, I got dropped again at the beginning of the 6th
lap and while I was struggling to finish the lap, the leaders of my
category finished the race in front of me (having a full lap lead on
me...)..The was the last straw that broke my fragile morale and I
gave up...Not proud of it, but it is what it is and I sure need to do
much more interval training, warm up properly before a race and work
on acquiring and keeping a good position in the peloton...