I rode hard yesterday. 5 hours of endurance pace at 253 watts average. I got home and did my recovery routine, then took Aaron’s car to go pick Tony up from the airport. His plane was an hour late, which was fine with me because I got there 45 minutes late. Traffic is getting bad lately, with all the retirees migrating down here for the winter (like me).
We stopped off at Fry’s (a cheap gorccery store where I always end up getting into a fight about walking with my bike in the store) and got some fruit and eggs. By now it was dark, and I quickly become lost. What should have taken 20 minutes ended up taking an hour and a half. I did a loop by accident and arrived back at the airport an hour after we left it.
Finally home, we ate some pasta before going to sleep early for the Shootout the on saturday.
We woke up the next morning (today) at 5AM to eat breakfast. Eggs, toast, oats. Then went back to sleep and got up again at 6:45. It was pretty warm out, which let us shed our arm and knee warmers within 15 minutes of our ride to campus to meet for the ride.
The race started at the last city light, and we began tearing into the headwind at 30 miles an hour. I made my way to the front and helped pull for a few minutes. Tony took a couple pulls too, which he probably shouldn’t have done, and then blew up and had to ride by himself for the next hour.
I retreated to the to mid pack for a while, then broke away after the bridge with a BMC guy. We quickly caught up to a small breakaway that had gone off a minute before us. It contained another BMC guy, Symmetrics, and a few others, but we didn’t work together and it broke apart as one guy didn’t pull through. Three guys went up the road while the rest of us eventually got caught by the remainder of the peloton. From there, I began pulling quite a bit, and we caught two of the guys at the top of the hill (which is more like a false flat). The wind was tremendous, blowing us all over the place and keeping our speed low despite how hard we cranked the pedals.
After the hill and flat section, I continued to help pull as we reached the rolling and slightly down hill area. I pulled a bit too much, and ended up getting shot to the back as I struggled to hold wheels. Gaps were opening up all over the place as the guys in the front sped up to catch the last BMC guy who was still off the front. He had an amazing breakaway considering the wind. Anyways, by the time I recovered, a break had gone up the road with 7 guys. There was only a kilometer to go to the base of the final climb, but our group slowed down when they realized there was not catching them. I got to the front and pulled up to the base of the hill. No one came around me so I continued to pull, increasing the pace. I looked back after a bit and only one guy was still on my wheel. We sped up and caught three guys who were in the breakaway, and I managed to hold my wheel sucker off all the way to the top of the hill. I feel like almost no one can beat me in a steep, 1K climb like that no matter how tired I am.
After the hill, the race was over so I went back to get Tony and we rode home with the tail wind, going 35 mph at times. He beat me in both of the stop ahead signs. My sprinting is pretty weak right now, but I felt OK today despite the hard ride yesterday. Time to go to Costco and then the street fair. By the way, it’s still sunny and warm down here. For those of you in Oregon, you have my sympathy this week. I saw the weather forecast.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!!!!
KENNETT PETERSON 