Return to Racing

May 14, 2014

Return to Racing

I couldn’t be happier to be sitting on a plane. I am going racing! It has been a long time since I raced at Mont Tremblant (2007?), so I am looking forward to meeting up with my teammate Maghalie near her hometown and friends for an awesome weekend of racing. Not even the forecasted 35-45mm of rain will dampen my spirits!

It has been 7 weeks since I was sidelined with a broken collar bone, but I have been able to train well and progressively return to what I hope is top form. Rather than getting 8 days at home between two, month-long trips I got to spend 1.5 months at home to recover, recharge and build on my form. Hopefully this will pay off later in the seasonJ

Again rehab was 2 weeks on the trainer, 2 weeks on the road bike, lots of athletic therapy and 2 weeks of mtn biking to get my back, shoulder and neck muscles to the strength they need for racing and my sharpness back on the bike.

Watching the World cups from home was a little tough, but also exciting and inspiring. It was great to see the women make all of the features and climbs in South Africa and Australia look fun and effortless! …and I wasn’t at all envious of them snorkling in Cairns… but we made parties out of it, had friends over and got in some motivated training.

The thing about being injured is that often what you would do with more home time…for me playing in the yard or deciding to start a home reno before realizing it is significantly more complicated than anticipated is that you can’t! Riding, at least on the trainer and then road bike was the easiest thing to do so I did lots of it as soon as I could building up my duration and intensity and for brain candy I worked on getting 2 more speeches checked off at Toastmasters…one on living the Dream (#6 Vocal Variety) and one onBone healing (#7 Research a topic). Go figure.

Keith and I took advantage of my added time at home to do lots of “camping”, visiting family and friends and enjoying the riding in BC. With the sprinter camping will always be in quotation marks now.

Post ride Picnic on Shuswap lake. Beautiful day!

After the outdoor riding began we headed to Penticton for an Easter Road riding camp, and Squamish and Revelstoke to get my wet trail mojo back. So I feel rested and ready and eager for the season to get underway!