This weekend I did the SAT saturday- I felt good about it but it is s00000 long. I don't know why it has to take from 745 to 115, over 5 hours. I don't think it needs to have 6 different reading sections, because the type of questions on the reading section is all the same, its just repetitive. The scale of the test is unnecessary- my mom said that when she took it, it was 3hrs, why they have to almost double that now I don't know because I don't think it makes the test more accurate. So I didn't get to ride on Saturday because I was whipped from the sat and on Sunday morning when I did the jrs race at bunny hop I felt really bad because I didn't open up on saturday which I almost always do. I had a hard day tuesday, wednesday, thursday, took friday off and then had to take saturday off so in the morning I was feeling really bad. I tried to attack but I couldn't accelerate well my legs just didn't feel snappy. The only time I attacked I was off the front like three laps and then two artemis riders bridged across to me which was a good situation for them, but unfortunately they don't know that and an artemis rider did the work to chase us down from the group chasing behind. The rest of the race I sat in and got dropped on the last lap when steven attacked. I went home, had lunch, took ice bath and then came back for the afternoon cat 4 race.

I felt great in the cat 4 race! I think I just needed the hard effort in the morning to open up because now my legs felt a lot better. It isn't a hard course but I was ready to play it aggressive and was in the top 10 and attacking a lot the first 1/2 of the race. There were a lot of big groups that I thought would stay away that I bridged across to, but the problem was that people would just keep bridging across until the whole pack got there. After the halfway point Nate Hakken and another rider went off the front for 5 laps and were looking good with a big gap. I took advantage of a fast prime lap to attack and bridge across to them with two people coming with me. The two riders off the front were tired when we got to them so we just went through them, but unfortunately my two companions weren't working very well together and we got brought back after 1 or 2 laps. Good for me, the first 1/2 of the race had been fast and usually strung out so I could move up and down well, but in the last third of the race after I got brought back from bridging to the break with nate hakken in it, the race slowed down a lot and the bunch got really wide for the last under 10 laps. I lost my position in all the swarming and was in no position for the sprint, so just a pack finish. But I am happy with my good legs and think that I will have more to show on the harder courses coming up: the technical Fort Ritchie crit next Saturday, Poolesville RR :) the saturday after that, and Fawngrove Roubaix!!!! the day after poolesville. I don't know why but I love the courses with gravel sections. It makes me feel like I really deserve it if I do well because it is usually harder. I think I can do well at those two back to back hard road races: Poolesville and Fawn Grove Roubaix because I did so well at Battenkill. This year I can do a lot better on climbs. I got really lean for Battenkil- at Wolfpack in February I weighed 143 lbs, but I weighed 135 for Battenkil. Right now I weigh 137 lbs, but hopefully by nationals I will be around 134 lbs or maybe 133 if my power is still good. My power was still good all the time when I weighed 135 lbs, in fact it was higher than it had ever been. The week after battenkill I set a new 5' record of 277w and did 234w for 26', which makes me feel like I could do 240w for 20'. My best previous 20' effort was 225, so this is way better than that. 240 for 20' would also be near 4 w/kg. To be exact it is 3.934 w/kg which gets me psyched because Bradley's max 20' is 3.911 w/kg and I always ask him about his w/kg whenever I set a new power record, but I have never been higher, but now I am which means... the climbing showdown is on now that he is home!