Race It Like the Rent's Due Tonight

I'm beginning to think that I could be pretty good at this whole bike racing thing.

As you can maybe tell, I don't take it very seriously now.  I don't really follow a training plan.  All I did this winter was ride 4 times a week: CTS sprint video, CTS time trial video, CTS criterium video, and an easy longer ride that I usually shortened or sometimes skipped all together.  You can also probably guess that I used to have a CTS coach.  Now all I do is race on the weekends, do some tempo rides during the week, and let the A guys tow me around at ridiculously fast speeds without doing a single bit of work.

I really want to do this more, though, and I think that if I can improve my bike handling/pack riding skills and just ride more, I can do so much better.  I need to get on a good team, or I need to pull out some serious magic at cycling nationals so that someone recognizes me and hands me bags of money.  

I also learned something this term that seems applicable to cycling.  In my motor control class, for our final exam, one of the questions (which she told us about) requires us to analyze a movement.  I wanted to do something cycling related since it requires a lot of things that we learned about.  I decided to talk about reaching for a water bottle.  This involves reach and grap, proprioception without visual guidance, and the maintenance of postural support with the other hand/the rest of the body.

So we learned in class that proprioception is better developed in the non-dominant hand because you don't watch it as much.  But I always grab for my bottle with my dominant hand.  I always figured that it would be better at this sort of thing, but now I'm starting to rethink this idea, especially since I often fish around for awhile trying to find my bottle.  My right hand is stronger, and I could probably stabilize myself better with it.  I also could shift with it if I needed to unlike the left.  Switching front rings usually isn't very helpful in that context.  My left hand is better at reaching and grasping while I'm not looking.  I tried this today with both hands, and the result was inconclusive.