This might be the hardest weekend I will have for this year. I do not have a race!!! The more rational half of me (my coach) asked me to take off to get ready for Tour de Toona.

To obtain your full sympathy for my weekend-off-concern, we have to put this in numbers, cyclists and Germans like analysis, I am both:

So far in 2011, I have raced 40 races in 20 weeks, averaging two a week. And I am far away from burn out. That means it has been five months since I have had a weekend off to do something else. Now the issue arises that I forgot what “something else” was!

Let’s talk for a second why I am taking off: Tour de Toona. Two weeks ago, I almost had a heart attack when I tried to digest the stages of the tour:

6 days racing: 3mi TT as a warm up, 2 stages > 70 miles, 2 stages > 90mi, and a nice 30mi crit at the end! And we are not talking about flat courses.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who got a little worried about this race because I looked back at the website again recently and it got shortened…by a lot! Only four stages with 1 stage >70mi and 1stage >90mi plus a rest day between.

Either way, I am excited to race the Tour.

However, the weekend-off-issue is still not resolved.

I think I will go back to my cycling roots, the old times riding with the V Day group who taught me how to shift, encouraged me to take the reflective tape off my mountain bike helmet, and waited for me when I got dropped after 20 miles… it seems so long ago, yeah…it was 2010.

Danny, Danny, and Bruce – Thank you, guys, for teaching me how to ride a bike!