TJ Woodruff ONLINE

Wow, the eve of race season is officially upon us. The Sea Otter starts up on Thursday and weekend races are booked all the way through the end of May, each and every weekend… For now I’ll be resting up and just tooling around on the Sewanee a bit before the Otter takes off.

The training has been done and I feel well prepared to race hard. I’ve done more hard training in the last two months than in the previous five seasons combined. I guess that’s the difference between simply riding and actually training. It’s nice to have numbers indicating that I’ve improved my 20 minute power by 6% when compared to any previous personal bests. Now I just have to put these extra watts to good use on the trail! After all, results are what count.  Placing well in the Super Cross and the Time Trial will be key, as they are running fast and ’slow’ heats for the Short Track event, splitting the field on current GC standings.

I’m driving up to Monterey on Tuesday so once I’m up there you can expect daily live reports with all the highlights. There should be plenty of race action to talk about, a good change from ’same old’ training reports you’ve read on here all winter. Thanks for checking in. -TJ

I’ll leave you with this taken from the EuroSport Flanders recap:

“Boonen stated in no uncertain terms that even if Hincapie had joined the top-two at the finish, it would have made no difference.

“If they ride with me they ride for second place, but if they wait they go at the end,” Boonen concluded.

With confidence like this it is very tough to lose. Tough as nails…