Weekend Winning on Wednesday

The excellent Route 1 Velo site has last night's Greenbelt Training Series results up already, and also the current series standings. For a training series, they treat results and series standings with as much gravity and attention as any sanctioned BAR event.

As do some of the racers, which is as it should be. True, it's only a training series. But it's a training series regularly attended by some of the area's top talent. Many are training right through the event, meaning they've worked hard the day before, earlier that morning, or even on the ride over to Greenbelt. But talent is in attendance, and while beating an A-list racer in a training event doesn't do a thing for your BAR status or personal palmares, it can have a substantial impact on your confidence going into the weekend competition. And since the half of racing success that isn't genetic is partly/mostly/all (depending on your training consistency over the past month) confidence, mental fitness is as dear on game day as carbon fiber tubulars.

And even if success at Greenbelt proves elusive, the weekend is still met with some individual and competitive intelligence. You may not race faster on Saturday after getting shelled on Wednesday, but you will race smarter. And you'll have more insight into your own limits, and the limits of the folks you're up against. Greenbelt, then, and the Virginia Beach Tuesday Night Soccer Stadium crits, and any mid-season training series, are as important to amateur racing as, say, the Dauphine Libere is to the ProTour. Sure, some people will hang it on their race resume like it means something to beat a bunch of guys saving their strength for later, but the true Tour contenders use it instead to sharpen up and engage in some careful environment scanning.

See you out there next week.