I don’t know where it came from considering my heavy training load last week and Monday. But damn. My legs felt like letting me know they were alive today. And they did so by kicking my ass. I went out with the intention of going moderately hard between 4 and 5 hours, depending on how I felt. I felt good. 300 watts for 5 hours, then a 30′ cool down, which was the most difficult portion of the ride. I got my cadence up to 106 on several occasions, as I’ve been training to increase my cadence skills. Cadence 106 for 12 seconds. I’d like to see you try that!!
For all you non-bike people, this is what the power charts look like that I’m always talking about.
After an hour of tearing up the hills and gravel roads of Parrot Mountain, I headed down south to Salem, then to Woodburn, then to Silverton, then to Woodburn again, then to Newberg, and finally home. I felt strong until about 4:48 hours. At 4:30 hours I could feel my legs beginning to fail, so I stopped at a convenient store. I dug into my bike bag and pulled out 65 cents in nickles. “Idiot,” I thought. I never put enough money in my bike bag.
I staggered into the store with my blood vessel eyes blurring over, and looked around for anything in my price range. There weren’t prices on anything which made me mad immediately. So I grabbed a piece of candy and took it up to the counter to ask the guy how much it was. He was scanning loto tickets and had his back turned to me and the other customers. There was a line of 6 people in front of me. I stood there for about 4 minutes, growing more and more impatient as the idiot kept scanning loto tickets without helping anyone. I went up to the counter and asked him how much the candy was. “99 cents,” he said. This, combined with the wait, made me extremely angry. I snorted my disgust, dropped the candy on the counter and walked out with my nickles. As I got on the bike, I got more and more mad at the guy and the price of that stupid piece of candy. Sometimes I get mad for no reason, and this was one of those situations. But it did fuel me for about 12 minutes, then I completely died. I spent the next 15 minutes struggling to push 200 watts, where before I had been doing mid 300’s. It was only 15 or 20 minutes to home from there, but I had to stop at a Taco Bell and steal some lemonade from the fountain drink machine to make it back. Very hard ride. Very fun.
Oh, and I just rememberd something from the ride. Two bulls raced me. Like the cow type bulls. They were surprisingly fast. If I was going to combine three species, I would do a liger, bull, and Clydesdale. A “Blydesdiger.” It would be massive like a clydesdale, have fangs, claws and eat meat, and have giant horns and a ring in its nose.
KENNETT PETERSON 