So it begins.  We are suddenly racing again.  It’s mid March, just 78 days into the year.  That’s how much time we’ve had to prepare for this.  Has it been enough time?  Are you ready to race or are you still planning your first event, not quite ready to get to the line just yet?

I counted 35 riders snaking their way to 446 and Knightridge tonight for the opener of the 2012 edition of the Bloomington Wednesday Worlds!  It was a large group for a spring break evening and time was short as the clocks just switched.  We hoped for 6 laps but a quick math check indicated that we’d be riding home in the dark if that was attempted.  So we elected to complete 5 laps of the notorious 4 mile clockwise circuit with two big ring rises on the front side.

It turned out to be a great weekend to begin that transition from conversant rides into the inevitable suffer-fests that really define this sport.  On Saturday of this first weekend day of spring break, a small group did an old favorite, Mahalasville returning on Lick Creek.  It was a solid ride with Colin, Gary, Ryan Preske, Joe Dempsey and Aaron Prange and a guest, Jeff. We had a strong showing on the final stretches of Lick Creek toward 45 with several of us managing strong pulls all the way in.   The ride was otherwise fairly uneventful except that Gary was visited by the god of punctures three times; once on Cascades, then a sidewall blowout on Low Gap (which we fixed with a ‘boot’ made from an old tubular casing), then again on South Shore.