I finally got back on the bike today. I took a break since the Iceman. My legs have felt really bad for the past few weeks, along with the rest of me. The weather was beautiful today, sunny and in the 40's, the sun rising up over lake superior, so I rode my bike into work. I left a little late from work to get home and had to ride home the last bit in the dark. That was dumb. Cars don't look for bikers in the daylight, much less the dark. I plan on mostly just biking to commute for a while and still not doing any sort of specific training. My commute is a little long to do everyday though. Otherwise, we have been hiking a bit and building some singletrack. It is a good time oof year to do nothing or low level actitivies. The hiking in Duluth is fantastic, and Scott and I have been hiking through the woods to scope out where new singletrack should be. The potential seems endless. Well, not much else going on at this point.

Well, unfortunately the Iceman didn't go so well for me. No triple crown this year, anyway. I didn't feel very good from the start. After the race, Scott told me he knew I wasn't going very fast today based on our warm-up together. We usually do a hard effort and he said he could tell I didn't have 'it', but thankfully he waited until after the race to tell me so. Races where I don't feel fast and don't feel like I can push myself are the toughest for me mentally. This year the Iceman, Ore to Shore, and Sheboygan were all highly mental races to stay in and get to the finish line. Iceman was particularily difficult because I lost my left contact about 10 miles into the race. I couldn't see anything! I could tell I was taking bad lines and had to slow down a lot on downhills and in the singletrack to avoid crashing. It was really tough and pretty dangerous. I think I was pretty lucky to hang onto second as it could have been a lot worse. Probably the most tired thing after the race was my left eye! It felt super fatigued.

Scott was in 4th/5th place early on in the race, tried to bridge the gap to the lead group and blew for the first time at about 10 miles in. He was still in the top ten until mile 22 and then blew again. Scott finished, so that makes his 4th race all year. He is looking foward to next year already, as some of his health issues are resolving and he is feeling better and able to train.

It was good to see some of our bike friends and have some closure to the season; catch up with a few people before settling into the off-season. I know I need a break. I feel really tired and my body has wanted to be done since Chequamegon. I have not raced well since. I was sick for about 3 weeks after Chequamegon, then got hives which lasted another almost 2 weeks. Training has seemed like work, so I know it is time to be done. I was really fired up to cyclocross race this fall, but it is not going to happen. I finally got my XO2 all set-up, but I think I am going to commute with it this fall and winter as much as possible. I have some really sweet winter riding bike shoes Scott bought me for Christmas last year. He always seems to get me great gifts; he also bought me my first pain of MTB shoes and shorts when we were first dating.

I can still be thankful for winning the races I did this year, especially Chequamegon! I think that will forever be one of the highlights of my MTB racing career. I was really fired up to get mentioned in Velonews a few times this year. That's really cool!