So it begins...

It's that time of the year. People are sneezing and eyes are watery all around; it is getting slightly warmer and windier, signs of an unstable weather; trees start to show some signs of being alive and random rain sparks here and there. Spring is here, and with spring, the 2011 racing season.

I spent last weekend rediscovering riding my bike outside and at the same time realizing that my shape is absolutely deplorable: I can summarize my Saturday and Sunday as either being on the bike, or in a bike-induced-coma-while-attempting-to-recover-via-couch-potato-therapy. Oh, well.

So, what came out of it? Aside from really really tired legs and never-ending hunger, I realized that, as said above, I am in a god-awful shape (this is relative to my lady-bike-riding friends and ass-kicking competition), and I decided that the best way to get back in shape is to race myself into it. Or to crash myself out of it –whatever happens first. Yay.

And I can’t back out: I just bought a shiny, sexy and expensive new bike, a sweet and expensive new set of racing wheels, and an even more expensive and not very pretty powertap. So backing out after spending all this money would make me a gigantic fraud and would be pretty damn embarrassing. All of these have turned into my “commitment device.” (yeah, yeah, I know, the geeky economist is showing up).

So, I signed up for my first race of the season: Black Hills, MD circuit race, which is fast approaching this coming Saturday. It is only 15 miles, so it will be a fast race. I also looked at the list of women racing, many of whom I rode with this past weekend, and my ass shall be whipped big time. At this point I am mostly hoping to finish the race. We’ll see.

I AM GOING TO GET MY ASS KICKED ALL THE WAY TO CANADA!! HOORAY!!!!

By the way, I am seriously considering starting a “side” blog focused mostly on bikes and my racing misadventures and embarrassing moments. This is mostly because in the local racing community there is a “spy” that searches for blogs posts related to each racing weekend and posts links to them. This would be mostly ok, except for that little detail that this blog may contain stuff that is a tad too personal to share with the entire local cycling crowd (stuff that I like to share with those that either don’t know me at all or know me personally at a level that I don’t mind), and they can actually figure out who I am.