Well, I may be feeling a bit out of shape, but the good news is that it seems like the other cyclists in the area are feeling worse. I did my first two bike races of the season this past weekend, Saturday was the circuit race, a short-ish one of about 25 miles under perfectly fabulous sunny skies in which I came second, and this morning in the team time trial my squad from the Quaker City Wheelmen finished second to a group of uber-equipped guys who rolled up to the course in their own custom painted Cadence Cycles van, complete with larger than life picture of one of them on the side. Yuck.
Cadence is the shop in town that everybody loves to hate. They are owned and financed by one of the grand high muckety-mucks at Comcast and have currently 1.3 times as much money as God. That said, no one from their store has been an ass to me personally, but their lawyers threatened to sue one of my club members for plagiarism a couple of months ago when he sent out a mock version of their email newsletter. I guess nobody had figured on a shop having its own team of lawyers.
Anyway, the races both went well and went a long way to bringing back my self confidence in the races. I'm looking forward to the season a bit more, wheras I had been a little bit worried after upgrading to a Category 3 at the end of last year. As per usual, I was kind of freaking out at the starting line, looking around at all the guys with newer and faster bikes, with shaved legs and calf tatoos and all that jazz. Fortunately, the bicycles don't ride themselves, and I actually kept my head in the game during the race, not pulling the field around in the wind like I usually do. Hopefully the rest of the season will continue in similar fashion.