Spring Racing in Eastern WA

The spring racing season is almost here. It's been a few years since we've been able to claim a "season" of racing in the Spokane area. This Spring, we have six weekends of racing to brag about. That isn't counting the Tuesday night Twilight Series which runs Tuesday nights all spring and summer (more on that later). Here's what we have:

March 7th: Wawawai Landing Time Trial & Hill Climb Race. Near Pullman WA

March 28th: The Muddy Huetter Roubaix Hosted by Vertical Earth in CDA

April 3-4: Frozen Flatlands Omnium hosted by Baddlands

April 10th: Ronde van Palouse , hosted by Spokane Rocket Velo

April 11th: Rocky Mountain Roubaix, (near Missoula MT, but close enough)

April 16-18: Tour of Walla Walla, probably the biggest race in the state. Sold out already.

Mandatory race photo #9: Two points if you can name the venue ;)

edited to fix formatting

We're making progress...

The bicycle racer progress report:

Previously I laid out several priorities in the process of being a bike racer in 2010.

Priority 1) Weight Loss: so far this has been a total disaster. Okay, so I'll specialize in the "flat" races. Next priority...

Priority 2) Ride the bike: Check...not a problem here. With this sissy winter riding has been fairly pain free.

Priority 3) Cross Train: Check...there's snow in the mountains and I've been "alpine touring" which I guess is hiking up the mountain on skins and skiing down. This is a lot of work. The other day I wore my HRM during the climb. I happened to look down and see 180 bpm. During a bicycle race this heart rate usually tells me, "you're about to hit the wall, then get dropped by the pack and finish the race by yourself", but it actually felt fairly normal for skiing up a hill. I don't know what that means in terms of training, but at least I was in pain and that's good preparation for bicycle racing. Anyway, here's Tony Aleto and I at Mt Spokane last week, looking like a couple of mountaineers:





Priority 4) Have a training plan: Well...does downtown bar biking count as a plan? Because I've represented myself pretty well over the holidays.


Sarah on her way to "First Night"


Here we are training on New Years Eve downtown: Patty, Sarah and Pat

Close enough to the NALP for me.


T-8 weeks until the first Mason Lake Road Race.