My 2013 racing year can be summed up in one sentence. It was over before it ever started.
I had a good plan going into last year and I thought some achievable goals, but the week before my first bike race I broke a couple of ribs. This wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time that it hurt enough to stop me from riding, training and sleeping. While I was waiting for the ribs to heal, I decided to go see a doctor about a problem with my foot that had been bothering me off and on for about a year. It ended up being a severe case of athlete’s foot. He put me on oral Lamisil for 90 days. One of the side effects, other than destroying your liver, can be fatigue. For every hour I spent on the bike I would spend four crashed on the couch after. It was the end of July by time I was off this stuff and another two weeks before it cleared out of my system and I could start training again.
So what’s the first thing I did once I was training again? Over train and end of with a pinched nerve in my neck/shoulder area that made it pretty much impossible to ride. That took another six weeks to get straightened out. At this point it was mid-October and the ‘cross season was in full swing and I was not even close to being in race shape. At this point I called it a season without ever lining up for a bike race, and only one running race.
So long 2013, and I am not sad to see you go!