When you've been doing this long enough...
Like back when cavemen and dinosaurs roamed the earth, you learn a few things...
#1. If you are looking at the course before 1500+ stampeding racers get a chance to ride all over it... IT WILL CHANGE.
#2. If you are looking at the course 3 days before your race and all those stampeding racers will pre-ride the course a bazillion times... IT WILL CHANGE.
#3. If you're in Madison WI and they are predicting a thaw and then the possibility of rain... IT WILL MOST CERTAINLY CHANGE.
So, why do a course check out at all... you may ask???
Well first of all...
CAUSE IT'S FREAKING THERE!!!!
But more importantly, even though the conditions of the course are changing... riding the course over and over again tattoos the various lines into your memory banks. So when you're too tired to think... the auto pilot can kick in and you know which direction to steer the bike.
That may sound a little far fetched... but a course has a million different tiny variations that you can choose to ride. Knowing how they change under various conditions and riding the same course several times, slowly burns those variations into your sub-conscious.
See... Some peanuts do have brains... they may be tiny brains, but they are rattling around in the shell somewhere.
So, with that long winded preamble...
The course is 99% the same as last year with one tiny change.
The change shoots us across a section of pavement before making a turn after a decent... rather than forcing us to make the turn on the pavement. There were a ton of crashes on the pavement last year, due to wet muddy tires and the change in course was a good call. Other than that... we are racing the same course.
I liked the course last year... still like it this year.
The course at the moment is for the most part, covered with hard packed snow. It is slippery in spots but totally ride-able.
The big climb is covered in snow... but a strip of mud is starting to seep through and by Thursday I believe it could be covered in mud and if it gets cold enough to freeze at night, the million dollar question will be, when the pitch gets steep...can we ride it or will we have to run it?
The big descents are for the most part covered in snow as well and those will most certainly be some variation of a mud or ice/mud slalom.
Tomorrow morning, we will hop onto the course again before racing starts 9:30, to check out the course and get in our "pre-race work outs". Then we'll stick around, watch some of the races and also watch to see what the course does after a bunch of racers tear around the course a few hundred times.
No matter how you slice it... it's gonna be a wild few days of racing!!!
On a bit of a separate note... I promised to share a little bit about my roommates Tom and Paul.
Before we headed out for our course check out.. I poked my head in Paul's room... and was amazed at how tidy this guy is!!!
Paul the Monk's Room
Then there's Tom's room...
Tom... there are things called hangers!
And to be fair
Here's the Peanut's room with the infamous exploding bags!
Now... I am discovering a few things about Paul. Aside from being super neat... This guy wastes "no time"! Not one second.
Here's his trip plan to Madison...
Here's the Peanut's trips plan to Madison
So... guess who's not going to caravan together on the way home???? :)
That's it for tonight...
More tomorrow after the pre-ride and watching some races!
Peanut out!
