I’ve been planning for a couple weeks to go down to the Lake for some trail maintenance this weekend, so off I went at 8:30 this morning. Driving down was fine until I got about halfway between Eldon and Lake Ozark on 54, then it really started coming down. Alls fine, just slowed things down a little. Get to the first Bus. 54 stoplight, OK, it’s snowing a little harder now, start off from the line spinning my tires just a little bit. As I make it to the Osage River bridge, it really starts getting bad, slow it down to 45 to make it up that big hill. Once I made it up to the west side of the Business 54 loop, it’s snowing a lot, and cars are starting to slide around. The decision is made to turn around, so I pull my trusty Focus into the Stonecrest Mall lot and take a quick stop at Charbucks, right before two huge tourbuses pull up and dump 60 people into the same Charbucks. It’s still snowing a lot, and people are not too happy on the roads.

Get back on the road, and it’s just plain nasty. Here’s an artist’s rendition of the conditions on 54 at that point, since I didn’t take my camera:

And it takes around an hour and ten minutes to get to Jeff City, where it clears up around Brazito.

Along the way we have to finish up the decision to cancel the race next weekend, which is still a crazy-tough decision to make, even under the obviously nasty conditions today and for the next week.

Last weekend I helped mark/clean some of the Froze Toes course and then raced it on Sunday. Overall, the race we uneventful; I hung out at the back and just stayed out of the way. I got dropped by hanging behind some guys that weren’t able to match the surge turning on D, but I managed to close the gap, thanks to my couple of rides with the Rolling Sitcom. Heck, I even hung with the group all the way to the finish, where everyone just kinda coasted in, except me at the back. I figure if you’re gonna finish a race, why coast it in? I pedaled all the way to the finish, and probably gained 20 spots in that last 200 yards. The closed finish line was awesome and totally worth it, too – no bunched up group trying to crash everyone else out.

Apparently this is the first outing for the new CBC kit, wonder who that roadie guy is? (And that dang designer guy left the fade on the side of the shorts, too!  

So overall the training plan of lots of rest time is halfway paying off. Now I just have to figure out how to fit more riding time into the mix, but March should help fix that by itself, right?