Sunday, November 30, 2008

Menthol, Mucinex and Eucalyptus




I used cough drops with menthol, an expectorant called Mucinex and an eucalyptus balm to help clear the green stuff out of my head and chest, but I obviously needed something more at today's race. Earlier in the week I got a head and chest cold. Of course, I did my typical thing and ignored it. I never seem to learn when my body needs a break. For some reason, I feel that if I stop training for a few days I will lose my competitive edge. Well, once again, I trained hard all week thinking that my cold and the green nasty stuff that I have been blowing out of my body all week would just automatically go away without rest. Needless to say, it did not, so I did the best I could to make my breathing at least a little easier. I must admit that the above mentioned products did help, but I doubt that any pharmaceuticals actually could make someone feeling sick race cross faster. Quiet frankly, I probably should not even have done the Murraysville Cross Race, especially since the weather was so horrible. But, again , being a little bit in denial about my health and wanting to support a local cyclocross event , I did do the race.

Surprisingly, the course was in better condition than I thought that it would be, so that was cool. I actually even surprised myself at the start of the race by going into the first left turn off the pavement in first place. But, pretty much from that point on, I was in suffer mode. It is not often that I have thoughts about abandoning a race; today I did. I made it through the race by battling against my two cross teammates Andy and Ernie. Without them being near me and having our friendly battle, I would have quickly lost motivation to continue. Mike Mihalik was in the mix with us Speedgoaters too at the beginning, but then he decided to turn on his turbo boosters and leave us in his wake of mud. Mike had a great ride to be sure, finishing in second overall. SteveO took the title as the Pennsyl-Tucky Champion and course designer Joe Ruggery rounded out the podium in third. Somehow or another I suffered through my illness and the nastiness on the course to finish in fourth in front of Ernie in fifth and Andy in sixth. Amazingly, Andy actually won the earlier 35+ masters race too, so he had a strong performance today. Ernie was riding right with me until he had a mishap over the double barriers, which caused him to go down, otherwise he would have probably been right with me until the end.

Thanks to Fred for promoting the race, all of the sponsors and Joe/Team FU for the course set-up and design. Also, thanks to David Burke for the posted photos above...me riding with Andy and me going into the course tape on the downhill off-camber turn. Overall, it was a nice race....painful, but nice. Now I just have to convince my body that what I just did to myself makes some kind of sense.

1 comment:

Feel It: The Factory Rider said...

Nice job at Murrysville Cross, way to fight off the cold.

Great season winning performance on Sunday. Gotta be tough in a 34-18. Excepting some serious mud, eh?

Here are some photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22787467@N02/3091767621/

Thanks for coming to BA cross series.