Rest Day

Not just for the guys in France, but for me as well. I've taken a whole new appreciation to resting since taking a couple days off in a row last week. As I've said before, it's definitely under appreciated.

I felt unbelievable for all 7 hours on the mountain bike this weekend. As hard as it was to basically "shut myself down" for two days, it made all the difference. It's nice to have such hard evidence that resting obviously works, and I'm hoping this experience will remind me that I can train hard, but I need to rest just as hard if not more so.

Wednesday I'm expecting to receive my first full suspension bike, a HiFi Deluxe frame from Trek. I'm building it up to be a possible primary 100 mile race bike. The next few races coming up are all on gnarly, technical, east coast singletrack with rocks and roots galore. Riding my Superfly HT is nice on the climbs, but I'm thinking I can make up more time and have some more control riding something that is full squish-particularly over the rocky sections and longer descents. From what I've heard and read, the HiFi is a more than capable descender, while still not being all that bad of a climber. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see firsthand by the end of the week.

On a side note, I'm glad to see that the media at the tour didn't go all crazy with shoving cameras in riders faces after crashes yesterday. Since it's been such a crash-laden tour already, it seems like the photogs are going nuts with wanting more and more bloody coverage. It's great to see images of everything that's going on, but c'mon guys, we have to remember that seeing a guy laying in a bloody mass on the side of the road is a bit barbaric. Also, that French media car's driver should be arrested. I mean really? Did you not see both the big ass tree and/or professional bike racer in the road? Dumbass.