Two months and counting

The wind in Flagstaff has been blowing today with gusts of about 45 which is indicative of the past two months. I can remember about three days that the wind was not blowing over 20 mph in March and April and it is getting pretty ridiculous. I traveled down to the Whiskey Off Road this past weekend in Prescott and raced in the 50 Proof which was about 50 miles and 6000+ feet of climbing. I wound up in 52nd place with a time of 5:12 and finished feeling pretty worked. I snapped a photo of myself after the race and was not looking so hot. The race was tough and fun for the most part. I am figuring out some of the things that I am doing wrong on those longer rides and will hopefully be correcting them and benefiting by the corrections. The temps were about 15 degrees warmer than I was used to and that contributed to my "feeling crampy" in my legs and having to dial it back a bit and take it easy. Hamstring cramps are not a whole heck of a lot of fun when they come on in full force. I managed to stave them off but it definitely slowed my progress way down and added a bunch of time onto my day's total. I took a couple of days off and went for a long ride yesterday and found some trees and snow laid out on the Waterline road so I rode down the other side of Schultz Pass to the highway and back for about 45 miles. Today I went out for an easy ride and learned early that I was pretty worked and decided on about 10 miles and to put some more food in my system. The past few days we began to go through the remaining boxes that still exist in the garage from the move and I finally came to terms with getting rid of my of Sidi cycling shoes that I got in 1996. They served me well and saw some good times. I also found this amazing goat head in one of my tires last week and had to put new sealant into my tire because the old stuff would not seal the hole. Goat heads are amazing little devils.