The first few days started out on track, getting to sleep in a little more than usual and not having to worry about class. The weather was a little cold and wet, normal for this time, but the wind was kind of annoying. Those are things I can look past though. On my ride however things were not going as planned, my legs had no energy what so ever. Every time I would pedal it seemed that I was going backwards. This running thing seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I see it as sabatoge.
I saw some wild turkey on my ride, that is always interesting to see. It gets me in the mood for Thanksgiving!
Since my legs were not wanting to work, I stopped an took pictures of the fall colors. These are supposed to make the people back home jealous!
Cyclocross season is starting so that means that all or most riding needs to be done off-road. There are a tone of sick gravel roads to ride around here!
One night I was hanging out with Eric in my room, I went out into the hall for a few minutes to work on my bike. Eric stayed behind in my room, munching on some animal crackers that he had brought from his room. Little did I know that he was doing more than munching...
Eric left before I finished my work in the hall and as he left he told me he left "a surprise" in my room. He left more than a surprise, more like 20 of them...
I didn't notice them right away, but he had placed animal crackers all over my room! You have to hand it to Eric, he got me good. I found a good majority of them but he said that I will be finding them for weeks and he's right. Every so often I find a new one in some random spot.
These are just a few of his hiding spots. Believe me, there are many many more!
My good friend Paul has been teaching me how to ride his motorcycle. Something I have been wanting to learn for a LONG time. We figured that since most of the students had gone home, one of the parking lots would be a good place to learn.
This is about my 3rd lesson, it's always good to just stick to a small area. I have no need to be on the open road... yet! Rebecca got to go for a ride on the back once I was done doing laps of the parking lot. Paul took her on some sick roads. Being on the back of a motorcycle is probably one of the most interesting things ever! If you haven't done it I suggest you try!
Rebecca and I went to Virginia and rode on the Creeper Trail. It's a dirt trail that goes along an old railroad grade. It's great for all ages and level of riders.
Luckily the weather was on our side, it was warm and sunny. The colors of the trees were more vibrant than ever because of the sun. The views from the top of the trail were awesome!
Lots of cool little places to stop!
This is when my week turned exhausting. The B&B that I work for needed me to work during the week, which is fine. But I was not counting on the extra work that I ended up doing. Luke, our coach, knew I was on campus for break and asked if I could help work on our cyclocross course. I said sure, I love cross and want to do anything I can to better myself and help out the team.
We met out at the course at about 8:30ish and it was cold and windy. I figured that would be fine because we would get hot from working. For some reason I didn't forsee this as being as hard as it was, my mistake... We hacked through tons of brush and thorns, we raked up all the excess and cleared new paths for riding.
Then we dug up extra dirt to make off-camber mounds to make the course as hard as possible. This is where my body started to hurt, I then realized how out of shape my upper body/core is. Then we started making an new stair/run up section. My arms and back were so tired and we hadn't even really finished half of what we needed to do. But after 6 hours we called it a day...
As soon as I layed down to relax my wholoe body stiffened up! I was too tired to stretch! The next day we went back at it, clearing more trails and taping them off. We then decided to build a little "fly over" out of some wood. We had no real set of plans for how to build it, Luke said to just start and it will come together. Sure enough after some time we had a pretty legit looking ramp built. It was even sturdy enough to ride!
That was another full day of work, which was not any easier seeing as how I was so sore an exhausted from the day before. But we got it done then went out to test our new course! I met Luke and Nate out on the course and we started riding, within a few minutes I was getting dropped. My body did not want to ride! I tried to hang on to them but couldn't. I gave up and rode back to campus to eat and curl up into a ball.
The cold weather mixed with my previous exhausten made me feel totally drained. I had never been so sore and so tired in my life. But I knew that all that work would make me stronger after a few days rest. Also with all that hard work our team has a sick new course to train on a get ready for nationals! Here are some of the awesome new additions!
Some of the sections in action!
Well that in a nutshell was my fall break. I don't know why I was so tired and exhausted, apart from the long days working on the course. I guess not really getting to rest from the weeks before break? Or I'm just extremly weak and a baby, I think that's what most of you were thinking, right? I hope not!
But I did get a few days of rest in and I feel much much better, I need to get ready to start racing cross, my first race will probably be in the coming week. I hope I'll be ready for it! Our team practices are starting up tomorrow, that should be a good indication of how the races should go. Sorry this was a long one, it was a long week...
I'll be posting more when I get it.
