Anticipation

It's been a fury of planning lately in the Lindine/Greenberg household.  Jess is off to Italy presenting at a fancy schmancy conference and, more importantly, eating all the pizza and gelato that I don't get to have.  I've been throwing myself simultaneously into getting ready for the last hurrah of my mountain bike season, the Breck Epic...for which I feel somewhat prepared until I remember that everything I am doing will feel like I have a plastic bag on my head at 10,000ft...yeah.  Honestly though, after the terrible run of luck I had at TS Epic earlier this year, I am mostly just hoping to have a week of racing my bike without much major incidence.  If the gods of things like tires, frames, etc can smile on me for a week, I look forward to shredding some sweet trails in the morning through mid-afternoon....and then maybe getting some sweet "recovery" fly-fishing in in the evening.  I mean, cold water and hydrostatic pressure are supposed to be clutch for post-race recovery right? And Cutthroat trout...Sounds good to me.

Beyond the end of my mountain bike season in just a week, I've been wading through the deep depths of the interweb in search of cheap flights and other logistical solutions in prep for my CX season.  At this point, the plan is coming together, some of the flights are booked, the clothes and the bikes are due soon, I've been doing more core and plyometrics, and my heart-rate goes up just sitting on the couch visualizing drifting around corners and sprinting up run-ups.  On that note, what do I have to do to ensure there is some mud in my future?  I have had enough of the heat and the dust for a while, bring on the 50 degree days, the wet off-cambers, the snot swinging like a pendulum from my frozen nose, the smell of embrocation thick in the parking lot air....whew, like doing mental intervals over here.

But likely before there will be all of that, there will be some fast dry action out there.  The big news of the start of CX for me is that I get to make the trip back to Yanqing China for the second annual Qiansen Trophy International.  Last year I had the honor of attending this first-year event and was blown away by the experience...I boarded a plane, not knowing at the time what I was getting myself into, but came home both deeply impressed with the event and the people who put it on but also with the journey that I never would have imagined bike racing could have sent me on.  A long way from upstate NY to Yanqing China!

So when I was invited back this summer, I jumped on the chance to represent all my sponsors there again.  The fact that they had upgraded the UCI status of the event from C2 to C1 an additional perk to traveling half-way around the globe and getting to see things like this:

And maybe, if I'm lucky getting to do this again:

Even sweeter than all that, is that Jess is going to be able to come with me on this trip as my "support staff"!  The opportunities for us to travel together are few and far between, so this makes the trip feel even more like a special occasion.  Plus, I get to make lots of jokes involving Jess being my soigneur...much to her non-amusement. Also, there will probably be much noodle consumption, and maybe a trip to the hotel spa with the pool full of tiny fish that apparently nibble all the dead skin from your feet and legs in some sort of therapeutic treatment...less sharks more Animal Planet exfoliates.  Strange?  Yes...but also kind of awesome.

After that I'll dive more into the meat of my domestic CX season, starting with Vegas and Boulder and then heading east for a few weeks of New Englands' (and NY) finest.  While I'll miss being home for that long a chunk of time, I can't lie and say I'm not excited to be back for some of the races I love  the most and the opportunity to see much-missed friends and family.

Oh, yeah...and I might be working on a top-secret singlespeed cx bike build.  Because, I heard there was maybe there was this World Championship race in Louisville...and I really missed out on my last chance to race Worlds there, so let's do this thing.

Beyond that, I'll ping-pong from airplane to airplane with occasional pit-stops in Ogden as I race around the midwest.  It will be frenetic, as the pace of cross season and cross races always is, but it will aslso, as it always seems to, be over too soon I'm sure.  But right now I'm shivering with anticipation rather than hypothermia, and that feels pretty good....