Sabatoged from within??

The leaves are changing colours, the sun is a little lower in the sky, the air is a little crisp, there are random chunks of building material left on the ground and the top of the car is throwing a different shadow.

Yep it's time of cyclocross season and last night was the start of the weekly series at Hardwood, seems like I was just there. I will say that I'm looking forward to the mini races but I did originally plan on just being a spectator for the first one and give the legs a good week of recovery. Some arm twisting, didn't take much and I was heading south with wheels strapped to the roof of the car. Seems like I wasn't the only one snookered in.

After a bunch of this and that's headed out for a warm up lap with Watson, the first rise and I knew the evening was going to hurt. I had low expectations on how much power was in the legs, I should have aimed lower. I could hear some words coming from them and they were not words that should be repeated here. The brain ignored them, or did it?

First lap felt like crap but started around for just a little more warm up. Heading out from the tunnel I felt this looseness in my left leg. It felt free and relaxed, that's why. The crank arm and pedal are no longer attached to my bike. Hmmm. It's not like it was just put on and I failed to tighten the bolts. Solid 100km of riding since the build up. Interesting. Quick run to the shop, returned to the proper position and made my way to the start line. Did the smart thing and started at the back of the pack, no point getting run over. Go!! Up the slight grade, 180 through a narrow line. The pack rolled through clean, slight downhill click up a few gears, put a little power down and then felt this very weird feeling of floating. Through the chicane there is some drifting out the back, flat rear tire. So roughly 2 minutes into the race I was out. There were expressions made as the crew came by a few minutes later with me on the sidelines.

I'm a believer in some different things, was it pure luck that this happened? Two mechanicals of totally different sorts less than 10 minutes apart. Or was it my mind doing that Jedi trick, your legs don't want you to race tonight, why are you not listening to them? That deeper section of the brain took over with a vengeance screaming "if you won't listen to your legs maybe you'll listen to this" as the crank fell off. Still going eh!!! This will shut you down as my tire blows. Yep the mind is a powerful thing. My legs were happy to have stopped.

Spent the rest of the time on the grandstands telling riders they were only 20 seconds back from the leader, watched a great last lap battle with the Shake'N"Bake twins. It's cross season, let the cowbells begin. .