www.chadhodges.com: Thus Far

You might ask, "Hey Chad, how's your season going?" To that question, most likely I would reply, "It's going okay." What I really mean is for the most part it's been pretty disappointing. Maybe, disappointing really is too strong of a word, but it has been less than what I had hoped for.

On an individual basis, I haven't accomplished anything I hoped I would. I've crashed out twice. Once helmet shattering and the other in the State Criterium Championships. I've had two top ten finishes in mass start races all season long. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

I would say the only goal that I've accomplished so far this season was coming in under an hour on the State Time Trial Championships. It's a 40K TT and I was able to finally break the hour. I got 2nd place in the state for the CAT 3's, which earned me a silver medal. It's been a never ending process this season of dialing in my TT bike and improving my TT skills is something I'd really like to work on. It's a little more difficult for me to work on my TT'ing because it's hard for me to sit on my TT bike in the morning on the trainer for longer than about an hour. It's not the most comfortable thing to sit on and at 3 or 4 in the morning it is really not the most fun. But whatever it takes I guess.

I've got a few more races I'd like to hit this season so we'll see how those go and then we'll start looking toward next season.

I would like to congratulate, Ryan Lenhart, one of my teammates on a spectacular State Criterium Championship race. Ryan was able to bring home the CAT 3 State Jersey. He easily won the sprint across the line and brought Bicycle Alley home it's first "W" of the season. Great job Ryan!

I'm in a pretty relaxed training cycle right now and it's been really nice to just get to ride my bike to ride it. It's nice to not have a workout planned for every ride. I've even started enjoying getting up in the mornings again. I even get to decide how long I ride each day, that's pretty nice because at least I don't feel like I cheated myself by cutting a workout short. My time and mileage is actually up right now and it's only that way because I want it to be. This has also given my knee a little time to heal up. I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with it, just that I have had a little discomfort in it for the last few weeks or so. It's either from the maybe twisting it in the State Crit crash or from running with buckets of paint while doing one of our floors.

Here's a few pics to kind of add a little color to this post.