How not to bunny hop a log.

Well, plans change sometimes. After falling pretty hard on my left shoulder and ribs on Friday whilst practicing barrier hopping, I decided not to race this weekend. I'm hopeful that I didn't break anything and I'll be back racing next weekend.

Before the fall, I had a great week of training and watching Pro CX on the interwebs! I'm psyched to try my first CAT 3 race and I want to lean up and get my VO2 power as high as possible before my next race so that I can destroy and demoralize my opponents.

Here is a run-down of my training this week:

• Monday: Rest
• Tuesday: 20 min warm-up on rollers, 45 min @ tempo, 10 min cool-down
• Wednesday: 1 hour easy spin while watching Frontline
• Thursday: 1 hour outside easy (Strava), 1 hour rollers/TrainerRoad w/4x4 min VO2 intervals with 3 min recovery in between
• Friday: 1.75 hrs easy spin + flying mounts/barrier hopping skills (You've got to crack a few eggs/ribs to make an omlette, right?) (Strava)
• Saturday: Rest
• Sunday: Eat bacon and watch World Cup Valkenburg!!

I was bummed to not be able to race this weekend, but it wasn't all bad: drinking coffee in my warm house and watching US racer Katie Compton rip the legs off all of the euro ladies.

Also notable: Lars Van Der Haar put on an absolute clinic in the men's race. US Pro Jeremy Powers got 9th! It is rare, rare, rare for a US racer to crack the top 10 in a WC.

The World Cups can be viewed live or on demand on the UCI Channel on YouTube. However, the CX races are geo-restricted in the US. To get around this, I am using the Chrome browser with the Hola VPN extension. You can set the VPN to any country. I set it to the UK and the program streamed just fine.

Hope you have a great week! ~Pat