4 hours. 20 miles of TT work with 15 second all out sprints every minute. 5 mile TT, 10 mile TT, 5 mile TT. Tony and I went out to Coburg to do this, and we killed ourselves. I didn’t have my power tap, but Tony averaged 393 on the 10 mile TT. I didn’t complete the 10 mile TT because I got a flat. To make matters worse, my co2 inflator wouldn’t work. After I finally got it fixed when Tony came back around, the weather took a turn for the worse. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees and it began pouring and hailing on us during our 10 mile recovery. We still had another 5 mile TT to do, but I got another flat. It was pouring and we were freezing at this point. So we decided to warm up in the Dairy Mart in Coburg. A 24 oz hi rev mocha and a handful of joe-joes latter, we were good to go. We did our our last TT back into Eugene. One of us would sprint passed the other, and then the next guy would sprint passed him. Our legs were incredibly tired, but we kept it up for at least 5 miles. Afterwards, we were completely covered in mud and exhausted. We took the bike path and practiced some bumper bikes in the grass for 5 minute, then headed back onto cement. As we passed under an overpass on the bike path near the Willamette, I noticed a guy standing right next to a duck in the grass. He waved us down for help. Apparently the duck had flown straight into the cement overpass and had fallen 20 feet down right next to the guy as he was walking on the bike path. We tried calling animal control, but they wouldn’t pick up. At this point, the duck was coughing up blood and spasming around in the last moments of its life, so Tony put his redneck skills to use and put the bird out of its misery by grabbing it by the neck and spinning it around in a circle and tossing it into a bramble of blackberries. Good way to end the ride.
We went directly from the ride to the monday night workout. Tony was destroyed and I found a lot of humor in his suffering. I was tired too, but mainly just giddy from all of the exercise. I’m a bit tired now.
Ok, I wrote all that earlier today (Tuesday) and put it in the present tense, which isn’t accurate obviously. So now I will talk about today (Tuesday) in the present tense, but remember: today is a different day than yesterday (Monday).
After riding with Tony yesterday and the monday night workout, I was feeling decently OK today, considering how many muscle fibers I’ve torn in the last week. I met Will and Mike at LifeCycle and we rode over to the crit course as it began to sprinkle lightly. The workout: 27mph 5,4,3,2,1 minutes with 1 minute rests in 53×17. It was windy. And hard. I was able to do the 5 minute interval, barely. But the 4 and 3 were not even close to 27mph. After that we had 5 minutes off, then 4,3,2,1 minute intervals. After sprinting up to 30mph, I went down to 24mph into my 39×15. I got up to 30 each time on the non wind side of the course, but didn’t quite hold 24 for the rest of the time. 5 minutes off again. Then the regular 24mph workout, which I did. But it was quite hard considering the freakin wind was blowing at like 20 mph on the back stretch. Later today I was riding my fixie commuter back from campus and had a hard time turning the pedals over going 15 mph. My legs are tired. Very tired. It feels GOOD. I feel much better than I did last Tuesday when I quit the ride early. I was mentally and physically tired, plus unmotivated then, and although my legs are torn to bits right now, I only want to ride more. After finishing the Willamette SR strong, plus getting into another journalism class that will allow me to graduate this spring instead of next fall, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from me. I want to ride. I want to tear shit up! Bring on the pain mother fucker!!!
KENNETT PETERSON 