Spring is finally here! And with that comes many different things: racing, motopacing, hours and hours in the saddle, daylight savings, future cycling chics...aka: girl babies! (not me, my two brothers and our friend Torrance just had a baby today!), rain, flowers, and my parent's 30 year anniversary! What else does spring bring? Well, for the cowgirl cyclist, it brings a fresh new look to my lovely blog of 4 adventurous years. It took a few months of work, but spring is the time that I have decided to launch this thing! So please let me know what you think and as always, I hope you enjoy! Like I said, spring is the start of motopacing.

Wednesday, as I was riding behind Owen's motorcycle for the first time this year, a rush of adrenalin ran through my veins. We were hauling down Massapoag Rd. in Sharon and at one point, pushing over 35mph! I had told Owen before we had started that today we would just start off at an 'easy' 23mph and 'kick it up from there.' Once we were about 5 minutes into the ride, I could feel that our speed had significanly increased and Owen was on a mission to break a record! I knew that my legs would suffer later on, but I played his game and sat right on his wheel. As we moved through the course, the clouds had decreased our alotment of daylight, so we ended up cutting the ride a little short. My heart pumped. I felt alive once more! The season's here!!

As I rode home from the motopacing session, I thought back to our epic ride in upstate NY this past weekend. Sunday, a group of us woke up as the ass crack of dawn and drove up the Cambridge, NY to test ride the Battenkill course. We had been spoiled with 70 and 80 degree weather all week, so to our luck, we were in the divine of extreme cyclo-cross! Rain was in the forecast, but on the drive down, we had some hopes that it would just be a light drizzley day.

We met up with my teammate Silke, and her boyfriend Gary and started riding by 9:30am. The roads were just moist from the mist, but not too bad. As we booked it down the highway and then through the covered bridge onto finally the first dirt section, we were making time. It was just about 30 minutes into the ride that we hit the first technical dirt section. The road had be saturated from the rain from the previos night so our skinny road tires immediatly sunk into the ground and our back wheel swirving all over the road. The mud was splashing into my glasses, so I soon pulled them off and tucked them into my helmet.

We turned to the first climb. This road was in the worst condition so far. I found my bike unable to move. It was like Gloucester 2010 all over again!! Every ounce of my muscles pushed and pulled on my cranks to get them to turn over. I kept thinking how distroyed I was going to be after 62 miles of this! Finally as I was halfway up the hill and not moving, I saw Gary and a few others running their bikes up the hill. "Man, this is like cyclocross!" I wasn't moving anywhere so I hopped off my bike and started running. Silke on the otherhand has crazy power, so she eleganly rode up the hill past all of us struggling riders. Can you believe that she of all people refuses to race cross!? Bob and Bill were also riding with us but were sticking together so we went ahead.

After the muddy climb, it was a little smoother but the rain started to pick up. We hit the road section and were flying. Gary stated a pace line and soon we were plucking away at the miles. After about 25 miles, it was pouring. Silke had crashed the previos day in a training race and had a nasty wound on her chest. The temperture had also dropped to 42 degrees so she opted to cut the ride short and head back to the car. We continued on for another section of the course, but soon, even with my wonderful Gore rain jacket, I found everything from the waist down frozen like a popsicle. We made a decision to head back early to avoid getting hypothermia or sick. As I got back to the car, I started to worry about Bob and Bill out there in the freezing wet mess. "We need to go back for them." I dialed Bob. No answer. We all stood in the parking lot of the Cambridge Post Office, stripping our wet clothing. Soon, my phone rang and it was Bob. "Hey Melissa! We are at mile 32." I told him we had gone back to the car and would come get him, "Um, ok that's good!" We said our goodbyes to Silke and Gary and hopped into the car. Aaron and I drove Bob's SUV, while Torrance and Phil were in the other vehicle. We drove back to where we had left the course and continued on. The rain had stopped and the roads became more tacky and much more ridable. Mile after mile went by and no sign of the two. Bob called again, "Hey Melissa, we are at mile 42, just so you know!" We kept going. I was impressed by how much ground they had made. Finally we zoomed past the long dirt section and to the big climb. There was Bob half way up the hill. I rolled down the window and screamed at him, "Bob! Almost there!" We parked at the top and cheered him to the car, threw his bike in and went looking for Bill who was just up the road. Bill was moving but look distroyed! He had taken a beating in the rain and even had a struggling rider almost knock him over on one of the climbs. They changed and we threw everyones gear in the car and drove to town for a warm meal.

It was an epic day. And so the season begins!!