Well, I didn't get to ride off the front like Landis, but I tried and I spent a good while off the front or attacking. While we were neutralized for a crash (what is with that?) I made a deal with Lila from Colorado State U to give her a leadout and split the cash, so the last 6 laps were fun because I was riding with more of a purpose and had a temporary teammate (the leadout didn't really work out, but it was fun to try something). Which brings me to my lack of motivation topic. I realized that, while nice, racing for cash doesn't really motivate me. Probably because I am still too recently from Peru to feel impoverished enough to really need the money and a check isn't really that exciting in and of itself. The other motivator could be glory but, let's face it, there's not a lot of glory to be had in the cat 3/4 field. Plus, I know that there's races this winter where I will be racing in all seriousness so it's nice to just have some fun and not focus on results. I did decide that I should probably race in the cat 1/2/3 field if I want to race seriously since I have no trouble keeping up here and that's after my max strength workout this morning and intervals yesterday and I get to run 400m intervals after tomorrow's race... bet none of the other cat 3/4 women will be doing that!

So what does motivate me? Just seeing how fast and hard I can go for how long. I am not a fan of playing games in the pack and saving energy. I want a workout more than I want to win. (Don't worry, come January that mantra will change.)

Only two days ago I mocked cyclists for not cooling down adequately but today I only cooled down for a measly 20 minutes. It started raining during our race and by the time I got back to my car it was raining pretty hard. So I got on the rollers, wondering if they were more difficult to ride in the rain. At 20min I almost fell off and that's when I had the epiphany that you shouldn't ride rollers in a rainstorm. So I stopped and put dry clothes and ate some high gylycemic index foods. Okay, Barb made lasagna for dinner tonight; real, homemade lasagna. I'm pretty excited. I've also discovered Silk chocolate soy milk as an after workout recovery drink; a hundred times better than any brand of sports recovery drink.