If the calendar says June, July or August, you can bet that Barkernews and I are doing a lot of weeknight interval workouts in the form of bike racing. Now, don't you worry- this doesn't mean we happen to be proficient at bike racing. No sirree. Nope, it's just an indication that we're trying not to puke several nights a week.
And we love it.
Monday night racing starts in April with circuits around PIR. I did a couple of those this year and then the excitement fizzled out for me. It might have been the fact that it rained pretty much every single Monday until July. Or what seemed like a high number of crashes. It lost its appeal after two nights of riding around and around and around a car race track.
Luckily, Wednesday night Mt. Tabor racing starts in June. Mt. Tabor is an extinct volcano with a road to the top and the race consists of 6-7 laps on said road. It is not an easy race and my "pain face" is in play pretty much the entire time. Despite that, I love it. I love the atmosphere, the people, the picnic opportunities, watching the other races. I might die after cresting that stupid volcano 7 times, but at least I went out there and left everything on the course.
And then there is short track mountain bike racing. In my quest to try something different and new and to see what else was out there, I raced my mountain bike at Vernonia in June. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod it was so much fun. Indeed, I had so much fun, I vowed to come out for as much of the 7-week short track series in Portland as I could.
It. is. awesome. Sure, I have poor handling skills on a mountain bike. And I am kind of a wuss on the bigger features. But who cares? The whole thing is more fun than should be allowed when your heart rate is sitting 5000bpm.
So. Remember this? Yeah, I lied. I still like bike racing. I just had to insert the whole fun factor back in to it. Add lots of really cool people, some sunshine, and good times, and if we're being honest? Okay, love bike racing. For real.
Suffering mightily on the volcano:
I have zero pictures of myself at Portland short track, so enjoy this lovely one from Vernonia instead:
