Racing at the Track last night...
My how things can change in life. This last year has brought so many changes to my life. Most all are seen as good - in one form or other. With those changes, I decided to find a focus again. I felt two years ago my life was quite balanced when I really focused on what was important to me between family, friends and personal goals/achievements. I decided to start taking action with some of those personal goals and achievements. I have wanted to race for two years but never felt I had the speed to compete. I ran into a friend that convinced me to take a race class at the track. She has tried to tell me this for two years now. I finally decided to do it. It was just a month ago that I took a track class at the Marymoor Velodrome in Redmond, WA. Since then I have been hooked! I even bought a Fuji Track bike right away to keep my motivation high.
I have done three races on Monday nights and a lot of Thursday night trainings. I am having so much fun learning what is right/wrong, what are good tactics and what is needed physically to ride hard with the rest of my opponents. I met two women on the track that are incredible. They have a great sense of humor, know how to kick butt and have fun. We are learning together and enjoying our adventures. We are trying to learn how to work together with our tactical measures. It is a lot of fun! Our goal is to join (one already is part of) a racing team so we can do winter training together, work together next year on the track and have fun using tactics while encouraging each other to keep improving.
I am really enjoying the fact that I am taking on a whole new adventure with cycling. I just can't believe 8 years ago I weighed 300 lbs! My goal was only to do STP in 2 days. Since then I have done it twice in 1 day. I have done some wonderful rides in WA, MT and CO. I have a lot of room to improve and I hope this winter will really get me physically where I want to be with the training I am planning on putting myself through. I may not be the fastest woman out there but I am having a lot of fun challenging myself, learning better bike handling skills and making new friends. Pretty amazing... I can't wait to finish stronger this year. We are all improving tremendously but next season will be incredible after training hard all winter. I already am getting built up anxiety!!!
Last night was a blast since I had my mom, my niece and her two kids along with several Seattle Bicycle Club members (Mark R, Jennifer, Mike M, Dan W, Arnie C, Tom P, and Jimmy P) cheering me on! It is awesome hearing everyone cheering you on and feeling the adrenaline build up from the energy in the crowds. My friend Brian made his debut last night. He did awesome for his first race! He is hoping to join a race team as well so we can train this winter - working hard to build up speed and endurance at high speeds for longer periods of time. My friend Mike, his friend Mario and my co-worker's husband Jim took a class on Saturday as well. They all hope to debut this coming Monday. It will be fun to have us all out there and racing hard. The 'rowdy' group from Seattle Bicycle Club are planning on being there again to cheer us all on. That should be pretty hilarious again! Last night they would choose a selected person out of each race - get their name - and cheer them on like you wouldn't believe!! LOL!! I thought they were going to get kicked out but they were having a blast. More of my friends may even join next year which should be a bigger blast! Until next week...
posted by Seattlebiker @ 7:30 AM
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