Hilly weekend...another in the books

Just like that, the Hilly 100 has come and gone. Which means two things:
tunnels of fall color in Southern IN

and sweet handlebar set ups such as this tasty little number:

Believe your eyes. It's upside down drop bars w/ aero bars; only at Hilly 100 (oh yeah, this is on a tandem to boot).

I changed up the routine last week knowing I wouldn't be riding at all this past weekend. I stacked three hard days (Tues, Wed, Thurs), which isn't that big of a deal really, but I haven't done back-to-back-to-back hard days on a few months, so I felt it for sure. I had my eye on the prize though, the anticipated fitness gains knowing that I would "recover" all weekend.
As for the recovery, working Hilly 100 is probably worse for recovery than racing. We are on our feet four many many hours over the three days and doing loads of repetitive "heavy" lifting. I'm sore in a lot of new places.
But we love working Hilly. It's a chance to see some people I don't get to see very often and chance to hang w/ my homies from Indie Bike Clothing store. Plus we make madd bank. And there's nothing wrong w/ that.
Now it's back to another ~8weeks of hitting it during the week and racing CX nearly every weekend. Boo-ya.