Jay Richards

A great day of mountain biking at Mon Du Lac. The whole family was along and all the boys got a bit of racing in. Jon started out with the kids comp and despite not being able to shift and brake very well with his broken finger, he was able to finish and had fun. Jake was next and bolted to the front at the mass start citizen race (mass start photo below). He said he went out a bit hard and faded to 7th but sometimes you gotta go for it and see what happens. His chain was tweaked and it kept dropping so that threw his rhythm off a bit at the end. New chain going on today!! Jens and Jack did the kids race and I was out racing so I missed their fun but the reports were all smiles. I had one of those days were everything clicked. Early in the week I rode at DM, just doing a couple of hill repeats to see how the 9.8 and body would respond. I knew my form was coming around when I took 12 seconds off the long climb and 8 off the short. Then on Wed. I did a race pace lap on the Maplelag course and took 40 seconds off my fast lap and cleaning everything relaxed, again with the hardtail. Than Saturday doing the Richwood loop in near record time not going all out, I knew my legs were coming around. Like I said before, either I have a great day at Mon Du lac or I don't. So I ran the hardtail after the confidence boosters earlier in the week and my back held up great which I was worried about. In fact, I felt better yesterday than I did at Afton when I was running the dual. Anyways, the tire pressure was perfect and the singletrack was a blast. The course suited my racing style perfectly.
A nice long hard climb (for the Midwest) and fast rolling singletrack. I really made a effort to stay relaxed and loose in the single so I wouldn't get all tight and stiff and do what I could on the climbs. (I'll have a full race report on skinnyski middle of the week)
My training approach for this year seems to be paying off. You always want to be flying at the first race of the year but after getting sick trying to do the last two years, I have taken a approach for a gradual buildup. I don't follow a written planned out program because if I try to plan anything, more and likely it won't happen with the schedule around here. So instead, I keep track in my head what races I want to try and peak for and build the training around that. I focus more on intensity since I rarely have a day for a ride over 2 hours and lucky to get a ride around 3 hours once every two weeks. The intensity is a variety of intervals with speed work, power work, hill climbing, endurance and bike handling. Basically everything you would encounter in a race. Not getting the huge hours in helps keep things fresh and hungry for the whole season.
I'll gun for a big week this week doubling the hours from the previous two weeks with a couple days of short and hard intervals and a race pace session on the weekend before tapering back for Red Wing and
Mankato. Since Jake won his age group the first couple of races, he qualified for the US nationals. I would be able to race since I still am holding the pro license so we might try to swing that as well. Have a great week!!