Sitting here and relaxing. Legs feel like oak trees. Amazing that I can be so tired after such a short 5-6minute effort. So we kicked off the Tour de Toona stage race today. It was a 3 mile prologue in downtown Altoona. The course itself was very technical as some riders chose to ride their time trial bikes, while other's kept it simple and rode road bikes. We had a split within our team. Kevin Gottlieb went with his TT bike and finished 20th, Jacob Tremblay (TT bike, 27th), myself ( road bike, 34th), Paul Ward (road bike, 46th), Russ Brown (TT bike, 59th). We all finished somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes. The part that sticks out the most is the shooting pain in my throat the second I finished the race. Burning lungs, heavy legs and some crazy knife like pain in my throat. Finding my teammates back at the car I soon realized they had similar feelings. Pain!!!! I was happy to return back to our happy host family with a warm welcome from no other than......Kenny! He's the man! Chicken, pasta, veggies, fruit and lemon cake would find their way to my hungry belly. Life is good!
Tomorrow brings a 73 mile road race. Distance isn't all too bad, rather it's the fact that it ends on the top of Blue Knob Ski Mountain. It's sure to cause a break and we are hoping to get our climbers... Russ and Kevin in them. The key to my survival tomorrow will be steady effort. I'm not a climber and have no means of staying with little guys constantly launching small attacks; rather I'm the slow steady train getting up the mountain. As long as I keep steady effort, I can hang with them. It's the punchy efforts that will take me out.
I'm off to bed for now. Going to hang with Kenny a bit, ice my back and off to dreamy land I go.
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