Steve Tilford

It’s amazing how much you can do in 24 hours. I’ve been out of Topeka for just about that long and it seems like I’ve done a ton. I’ll write about the race tomorrow. I’m kind of in a time crunch today.

I will say that it is very important to show up at each and every race with the right mindset. By this I mean that you need to be able to adapt your mind to whatever your physical ability is going to be that day. That is a very important part of bicycle racing. Yesterday I forgot that and now I have a bad taste.

It’s nice to be out of the hot temperatures. But it is muggy here in Iowa. It rained a ton yesterday morning.

I’m on my way up to Cable to MTB ride for a few days. Bromont is going to be very happy when he realizes the final destination. I’ll post more later.

This is the funnest thing I saw yesterday. I was waiting in drive through at McDonalds for a cone yesterday and the car in front of me let their dog out to pee and the dog jumped onto the roof of their car and started barking. The owner lady said that the dog was so excited he was going to get a cheeseburger he couldn’t stand it. Excellent.

I raced Saturday in Des Moines Iowa, in front of the Capiotol Building at the East Village Criterium. I raced the race last year and really enjoyed the course.

I finished 5th. I’m not sure what happened. I was much better than 5th, but that is the place I got. Since I’ve had a couple days to think about it, I’ve decided that I didn’t have the mentality to match my physical feelings. When that happens, it is never a good result.

I’ve raced so little the last couple months since I fell and separated my shoulder that it is never a given how I’m going to feel. Add in the extreme temperatures and it is nearly guess work. I thought since it was close to 20 degrees cooler than what I’ve been riding in the past month that I’d feel great. That wasn’t the case.

And when I wasn’t great, then I was sort of depressed. I wasn’t horrible, I just wasn’t. It was muggy and I was sticky all day, but that didn’t really explain why I never came around in 70 minutes. I kept thinking the whole race that I was going to feel better. My jump was pitiful, but I felt like I had okay power. I felt the whole time I was just about good, but it never happened.

So, during the whole race I was not paying enough attention to what was going on around me and too much attention to how I felt. I made a few moves. I didn’t have enough snap to lose the guys I needed to. That being said, I never made a full out effort until the last lap when I had already dug a deep hole for myself.

I’m usually really good at maximizing my placing in a race. I don’t like finishing 5th in a local race when I felt better than that. 5th was about the worst I could have finished and I didn’t race that badly. I didn’t race that well either though.

Cycling is an unusual sport because you usually have enough time to ride out of a funk if you have the ability to start with. I’ve started many races thinking I was bad, only to be going great a couple hours later. Usually, when I’m good at he start of a race, I’m good all day.

The hard thing is when you’re almost okay, but not quite there. So you have this big question mark, in your brain, the whole race, scrambling up the important information you need to have a good result.

I’m pretty much done dwelling on it. I’m up in Cable Wisconsin. Bromont loves it. I’m going to ride my MTB bike for a few hours today and see where I’m really at. It’s really hard to fake it much riding off road. Even just training.