Gila

It’s been a wee while since my last write up.

Personally I am not crazy about blogs with blow for blow reports on how each stage went kilometer for kilometer.

What I can say is that Gila was a learning curve. Last year I got extremely tired and burnt out at one stage from the volume of racing. I was just shy of 90 race days. Joining PureBlack gave me a bit of chance to control this a bit more. With such a big squad there were a few races I could miss due to the already strong presence of PureBlack riders already there.

My last race was in February in Hamilton at the Rev120 before Tour of the Gila. It is almost 2 months apart from each race.  What has surprised me the most with such a big gap between races is how ‘rusty’ you can get. I struggled with the feeling of racing in the bunch making poor calls and judgments. I must say it is very disappointing and my performance suffered because of this.

Racing at altitude is also a completely different experience compared to training, although having lived at altitude already for 6weeks it did take a lot of the edge off it.

It is easy to focus on the negatives and start comparing myself to others who have had a good tour, however with the support of some of the older guys in the team I have learnt not dwell on how it went. It was simply just not my race. I have to sit down see what I can do to improve myself for the next race.

I use to be good at stretching and doing my core work out but I have got lazy. Rooming with Guddy (Tim Gudsell) has definitely encouraged me to get back into it.  Also for Scotty his final stage of Gila didn’t exactly work out for him either. However he has laughed about it and now has that drive to race even harder at our next race Joe Martin.

Seems like there is plenty of time to do some thinking here, I type this as we are on our second leg on our way to archensaw. We drove 7horus late into the night after the last stage of Gila and we are now following it up with another 11hours on the road. Can’t say it is exactly exciting but I am living up to my nick name “Noddy” and sleeping through most of it to help make the time pass a bit easier. I can now say I have been to Texas after driving through it right?