Crazy is as Crazy Does

Yes, I went ahead and signed up for Rouge-Roubaix again, this time without adequate fitness and with very, very mixed feelings about a $79 entry fee for a one-day race with no cash prizelist. Somehow the masters got left out of the prizelist altogether this year, which probably explains the huge Cat. 1/2/3 field. It's also the first year that the masters aren't racing with the 1/2/3s. The but prizelist for Cat. 1/2s and the Cat. 3s has drawn a lot of horsepower to the race this year. I expect carnage, pure and simple, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'm still kind of wishing I'd entered as a Cat. 2 instead of a Master. Hope springs eternal. They'll almost certainly hit the 125-rider field limit, and considering that some of the roads in the first 25 miles or so are way too narrow and winding for that, it may get a little chaotic if one or two of the teams gets aggressive early. Mitch is thinking about the possibility of separating the Cat. 3s into a separate race, but that won't be so simple. For one, he'll need to come up with the additional support vehicles, and for another it will probably piss off some of the teams that have Cat. 3s who they are counting on to cover things for the team leaders. Anyway, I'll be riding with the old guys and the girls, and since the latter are competing for real prizes, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up controlling the race. I hope all of the masters and women can also control their bikes. As usual, my personal opinion about riding this race again is that I am obviously just plain crazy. Now there's a news flash! At least the weather forecast is calling for moderate temperatures and a low chance of rain.

This morning's long levee ride started out pretty chilly but the sun was out in full force and it really warmed up quickly. It was the first morning this year that I've gone out to meet the 6:15 am ride without my headlight. Guess it must be Springtime. I think we just get a week or two of early morning daylight before we switch over to daylight savings time, though. Anyway, we had a good group this morning and the relatively light wind made it easy for everyone to stay together despite the not insignificant effort being made by those pulling at the front. I did a good amount of pulling myself, actually. Brett was riding Powercranks today and at one point when I was behind him in the paceline I thought, "I wonder why Brett doesn't look as smooth as usual." Then, of course, I remembered about the Powercranks. Normal humans probably couldn't ride 45 miles on those things on a good day.

So I broke down yesterday and ordered a pair of Specialized Body Geometry footbeds. I figured it would be worth the experiment to see if the metatarsal button built into them has any positive effect on my hotfoot problem. It's not likely I'll use any of the varus wedges that come with them since I've never had any hint of knee tracking issues, but if they help with the neuroma problem they'll be well worth it. We'll see.