Saturday, January 13, 2007

2007 Season

Preparations for the 2007 racing season began January 1st. I’ve been hitting the gym 3x a week and riding 4x a week. The weather has been unbelievably cooperative, although it’s been difficult to coordinate riding outdoors with my schedule. It’s fair to say my timing was impeccable when I sold my snowmobile in the fall. I never thought that it would be more suitable to ride a bike in January rather than a snowmobile!
Here are a couple of images to confirm the blurred line between winter sports and summer sports:

The disturbing element to this weather, however, is the growing concern for global warming. The combination of an El Nino weather pattern and the CO2 in the atmosphere makes for an unsettling environment. Having watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” we Wheeldens will be doing all we can to conserve energy and limit our impact.

My race schedule has yet to be finalized, but my plan is to focus on a few marquee events such as the NORBA National Championship, the Masters World MTB Championship if it’s out east, the Fitchburg-Longsjo and Green Mountain stage races and the Mt. Washington Hillclimb. I won’t be contesting any of the mountain bike series; I’ll just hit local races that are convenient and fit into the training plan. I’ll likely do a few more road races and hope to be more competitive in ‘cross this fall.

Until then, it’s trainer time!