This is your brain on sick

The past two days I've felt like total crap. It's nothing race related, I can assure you, but none the less I've been home bound for the past 48 hours unless you count a brief walk to escort my wife home from work during a rainstorm. I've been sleeping lousy and worse the headache and the cold medicine yesterday combined to make my writing even more flighty than usual. (Though I am still awesome). This lead me to miss some things I had really wanted to mention, including having a sentence I just didn't finish:

• Just as I had managed to pick up my bike and get out of the way to catch my breath after my face plant[ a fast, experienced rider on a really nice bike passed me. Not 5 yards in front of me, he took a tough line over some roots, and did an end-over right there. Now as you're probably aware, I always want my competitors to do well because I believe we're all just racing ourselves. But just that one time, I was thrilled to see someone who knew what they were doing take a spill. I had literally been thinking "I'm probably the only one who's going to do that today". Thankfully, the guy wasn't on the ground 5 seconds before he was up and on his way. If he'd been hurt, then I would not have been happy.
• I've learned from comments, emails, and message board posts that this race was actually a very tough course and that the 6 mile version wasn't easier; just shorter. In fact, some have told me after making it through this one, I might be able to expect an easier time on other courses in the future. Let's hope so, because I still don't want to think about getting back on the bike for another day or so.
• The theme of this race was the "Landmine Classic". One thing about landmines, they don't have a very good rep, nor are they particularly much to look at. In fact, if you showed the common landmine to someone on the street, I doubt they could tell you what it even is. So, the race organizers decided to use a grenade as the visual marketing tool for this race, and the race t-shirt features a picture of one prominently. All this leads to the finishers "medal", which was actually a dogtag. I'll get a picture up later, because it's a very unique idea (at least in my experience) and I think it's pretty cool. I didn't even know we were getting one, so I was extra excited to see it and have it be something different.

So now that I've got my first mountain bike race out of the way, it's time to focus back on training for Club Nationals. Regardless of my feeling under the weather, Rachelle and I are going to do some light lifting and core work shortly, and tomorrow I swim and run. It's still over 2 weeks til the race, so I have enough time to hopefully kick out some serious run workouts and get in half a dozen swims. 

I'm not neglecting this race, and I will definitely be training hard over the next couple weeks, as I really want to make a nice showing. But I think my current level of fitness has me mostly ready to do a sprint, with one exception; my food intake. The food and portion control aspect is the hardest part of all of this. I can't even pretend to have that figured out right now. It simply comes down to willpower and goals, on a day by day basis. Some days I have the willpower to make my future more important than my present, some days I don't. I just have to find ways to not just make up for poor eating habits with exercise, but rather to use my goals and plans as a way to reinforce what I need to be doing.

One last thing I want to add is a welcome to all the mountain bike folks that have been finding their way to the blog. A few folks who I met at Landmine managed to find the blog, and have spread the word. Thanks for visiting. I can't promise the blog is going to become all MTB all the time, but clearly my 90 minute 7 mile effort shows I have a knack for landing on my face finishing what I started, whether that be on the road or in the woods. So, you can be sure there will be more mountain bike talk, probably starting again right after Club Nationals.