Racing? Sort of.

On Sunday I did my first "race" in 18 months. It was the final of the CSC's Short Track series and it was so fun. Held on Siberia Flat on Kennedy's Bush it was 20 minutes of lung searing, leg smashing awesome and I was super stoked with how I went. And when I say how I went I don't mean where I got in the race (I was lapped by a child), but how my body felt during and after. This was the first time in aaaagggeesss that I really pushed my body as hard as I could and on the start line I didn't really know what would happen. In fact I was quite prepared to pull the pin if things felt bad. I certainly didn't want to send myself back to being bed ridden.
I had a great ride at Bottlelake with a mate on Saturday and that gave me the confidence to push during the race. Saturday was a great blast with lots of hard out sprints and then some skills practice on the skinnies. It seems that my loss of fitness has meant that I'm now riding inside my skillset so that I'm actually feeling more confident on the bike than ever before. I feel I have control over what my bike is doing now, rather than just being along for the ride some of the time. And that's how it was on Sunday at the race.
The singletrack flew by. Andre at Hub Cycles has recently tuned up my suspension and my bike was running like a dream. It was super responsive through the singletrack, flowed down the bumpy down hill (even when I was blasting brake-free) and pedalled great back up the hill. I was aiming for 3 laps in my 20 mins so was really happy to easily get 4. In fact I think I might have almost squeezed 5 in if I hadn't stopped to help a fallen rider at the start for a couple of minutes.
And now I'm off to Hanmer to ride sweet sweet singletrack for 3 days, weather permitting. I have to say, looking out at the storm that's raging right now, there may be a lot of sitting in hot pools and doing homework and less riding than I would like.