DON'T PUT THIS ON GAMJAMS. INSTEAD, GET A LIFE.

This week was difficult. Starting with Monday I had a terrible day. I ride my bike to school and it was raining hard so I was soaked the rest of the day. I left a notebook at home so I had to ride home during lunch and get it and come back. Now I was covered in dirt and soaked for the rest of the day. Then finally the school day was over. Then I was up all night barfing and pooping diarrhea until my stomach was empty and I was feeling so dehydrated and weak I could barely stand. I had to stay home from school during the final week before spring break where we were slammed with final homework assignments and I was working from morning to night on Wednesday trying to catch up on everything but I could barely think that hard let alone walk without my head spinning and vision going black for a couple seconds. I was trying to drink a lot of water with electrolyte mixes in it since my stomach had been totally emptied. All that my stomach could handle were mellow foods like matzos bread and yogurt. On Wednesday I ate something weird for dinner and my stomach was really hurting again and I thought I was gonna start barfing again but fortunately I didn't it just hurt really bad. On Thursday I went to school, and just walking around that much from class to class made me super exhausted. Then afterschool I attempted a ride. I was gonna do like 1.5 hrs z2, but my heart was really high so I had to knock it down to like low zone 2, and after the first hour I was completely cracked and I just rode super slow back home. Friday I just took as a chill day to try and recover from getting super cracked on thursday from my epic 1.5 hrs. I still couldn't eat that much exciting food and I got full really easily because my stomach had shrunk I guess from being totally emptied. For example on friday we went to sushi for dinner and I had 4 pieces of a roll and I was stuffed but then it hurt my stomach because it was probably too fancy of a roll for my stomach to handle. I had lost 8 pounds over Monday night, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and with my stomach being fragile and easily filled up on thursday and friday I still hadn't been able to gain it back so I was feeling pretty weak by the time the weekend came around. I wasn't sure if I was ready to race and to be honest I was really doubting myself based on the way I felt and that I only got to ride once this week and felt horrible on that ride, but I decided to be optimistic and give it a try.

On Saturday we drove to Charlottesville and I rode the course as always. I rode with the Brookes and we did 3 laps or a little less than 2 hours. We just rode zone 2 and I felt okay, but it was definitely not even very comfortable. We did a couple hard efforts. We did like 2 sprints and David beat me by like a bike length each time which perhaps I should have taken as a sign that I was feeling bad because usually his max watts are a lot lower than me, although they were slightly uphill sprints so maybe david just macked the w/kg advantage. Then we did a hard effort up the hill after the first corner on our third lap. I was on David's wheel until the final part where it flattens out where he dropped me. Since I felt okay going hard this is when I decided for certain that I was racing. I got a shit sleep because I was nervous about we were watching this video of Nate at redlands but usually I like to completely forget about cycling the night before and just watch a comedy movie so that I can sleep well which I was doing but then my dad brought in the laptop on full blast redlands volume so I got all excited about that and then I barely slept because I was stressing about my own race tomorrow and being sick and how I would feel. I was just racing on my crappy training tires and wheels (heavy powertap rear wheel).

The race started out slowly... mainly because there was a neutral start (funny joke). I had a good warmup but then I needed to pee before the race and I needed to pee really bad the whole race and I couldn't focus that well but I tried to not think about it. I get nervous before races so I always need to pee like 5 times but this race I only peed twice beforehand so I still had to pee really bad. There were some people who attacked in the first two laps but all of them later got dropped or spent the rest of the race at the back. I knew I had to keep good positioning everytime before the big hill after the first turn. The first two laps I kept good top 20 positioning everytime before that hill for the first two laps. Also after a lap and a half it started raining, although not that hard but it always feels harder when you're racing. It was windy in many places too. Sometime after the second time up the big hill and the third time I ate a gel and lost my good positioning. I was at the back now, I needed to pee super bad, and it was raining horribly but I really wanted to make it to the finish this year. The huge cat 4 field took up the whole road and I just couldn't move up, everytime I tried people yelled at me or cut me off. It was really stressful. Coming into the big hill for the third time I knew I had to move up because I couldn't start the hill from last wheel because those last ten or 15 riders where probably gonna have to come to a near stop in the corner and then were gonna get dropped anyway. I jammed it up the grass somewhere and started the hill like 15th to last. I slammed on my brakes and had to go really slow around the corner and then I had to sprint up the first half of the hill to get back up to the lead group. I crested near the back and had to suffer a lot to make it up the hill. The rest of the lap was frustrating because I couldn't get around the field that stretched curb to curb and this guy at the back with me kept yelling at me that the way I stood up and moved my bike back and forth violated usa cycling rules. I didn't say anything but it was stupid because there was no one behind us and he had the whole road to avoid my dangerous riding technique since we were at the back. Then he said that he was gonna "tell the ref" which to me was hilarious because there is no rule against not looking like a fred when you get out of the saddle and also if he went back to the moto ref to "report me" then he would not be able to chase back on and would get dropped which would be hella rofl. The fourth time up the big hill I started dead last, had to come to a stop in the corner, and had to go extremely hard just to crest the hill in contact with the pack. The rest of the of the lap I still had hope to move up and take the sprint with good position because my legs felt pretty good but there was no chance. When we came around the last corner I was last wheel again and the acceleration was super hard out of it. I sprinted out of it as hard as I could but I got put like 20 meters out of the draft and I got drop. To tell you how many people got dropped: I finished 51st out of 125 starters despite riding the last mile super easy.