Here we go...

For the last two months, I've been riding with a club out of Brentwood. Fast, hard, group rides. I was invited by a guy that works in the same suite of offices where I am freelancing. He's my size, only a couple of years older than I am, and after a couple of weeks of getting dropped and taunted at the same time, I found out that he is the captain of the club's elite race team.

A couple of weeks ago, he invited me to join the beginner's race team, and this morning I started training. Now, lets get something straight. When I say "beginner", what I mean is all of the people who have never raced, raced for only a year or two, or are just beginning their professional careers. Under the 5 category system, you start as a 5. If you participate in a certain amount of races you move up to a 4 immediately. Then, if you accumulate enough points (points are given to those whose place in races), you move up to a 3 and so forth.

The club, LaGrange, has three teams. Cat 4/5, Cat 3 and Cat 1/2. So I am now a part of the Cat 4/5 team.

We will train for the next three months or so, until the season starts in Jan/Feb. Today, there were four of us, and we did a 35 mile ride around Santa Monica, Venice, down to the Marina, across the inlet, a couple nice flat roads next to the airport, and back. Our pace was 22-23 most of the way, with some stints at 20. We were double mostly, and I pulled for quite a ways on the way back. I'm happy to report that I am now about 145-150 bpm at 23 in a shallow draft, and 160 pulling.

I'm really in the thick of it now though. Tomorrow we are doing a time trial up Mandeville Canyon (once a month you go in 30 sec intervals and they publish your time), and then I will be riding with the team on Saturday and Sunday as well. And there's no slack on weekends, either. 6:15 start times both days.

Just to give you an idea of what this means, I got home at 7 tonight. After cleaning the bike, cooking dinner (and enough for tomorrows lunch), washing my gear, and taking a shower (can't do it in the morning!), it's time to go to bed by ten so I can get 7 hours of sleep and be up at 5. This will be my schedule 5 out of 7 days a week.

And this is the offseason?