Written Saturday evening:
Last night’s dinner of behemoth sub sandwich and beer did me good today, so I decided to stick with what works. I’m currently a third of the way done with each. There were two races today. One was the bicycle time trial race. The other was the important one: the race to the Nob Hill grocery store in Salinas before the deli closed. I made it just in time, right before 8PM. Actually I’m not sure if it closes at 8PM, but since I made it there 10 minutes before, I’d like to think so. Sort of like making a yellow light. Feels good.
I got the same sandwich as last night, though the bread is different this time. They were fresh out of fresh ( as well as stale) 12-inch bread rolls so the guy had me grab some bread from the bakery. I picked out two rolls of Dutch Crust. Most things Dutch are pretty amazing, as was/is this bread. I don’t mean this at all figuratively…I would end the lives of 134 baby bunnies just to eat a single bite of a well-baked Dutch Crust bread roll. The sandwich had to be spread out over two rolls since a 12-inch Dutch Crust is purely a thing of the imagination—this meant that I got even MORE sandwichs for the dollar than last night. Day=success. I think if this Nob Hill grocery store existed in Boulder I’d eat there every night. Man do I love NOB. That was a joke. A play on words if you will, because nob means penis in England. I love explaining jokes.
As always with stage races, I like to get in some good training volume so I rode this morning for an hour before breakfast. Then I got in a good solid hour and a half before the TT, which was eight miles long (one lap of the road course). Then I rode more afterwards too for good measure. For some reason I’ve been thinking of Winnie the Pooh a lot lately. Not in a sexual way or anything. And not just today either, but for the past two weeks. I have no clue why. I don’t mind it, I just think it’s a bit odd. Uh oh, I think my beer to sandwich ratio is off. And by off I mean just perfect.
Okay, the TT. Usually I suck at time trials. Today was no different. No wait, it was different. I got 7th somehow and moved up to 10th GC! This is happy news, no? Actually not really. Though I am happy about it, it also helps instill my natural instinct to regret every decision I make in bike racing. Had I sat in during the road race there’d be a solid chance I’d be top 3 or 5 GC today, and by chance I mean for sure. When did I get so arrogant? Oh yeah, since always. Arrogance is armor for weakness. But since I’m saying it sarcastically it doesn’t apply to me.
Regardless, Kirk Carlson of Predator Carbon Repair showed us all why he used to be in the Pro Tour. He crushed the TT and took the GC lead like a true manager. I mean boss. I feel like I’ve used that joke before but whatever. Alex Hagman of Jelly Belly had a misfortunate mechanical that took him out of the top GC contention. Or did it? Dun dun duuuuuuun!!! Tomorrow will be an ultimate show down between Jelly Belly (with Morgan in 3rd and Alex in 11th) and Cash Call (with four guys in the top 10). Throw in the loners: Kirk, Justin Rosi, and myself and you’ve got a good ol’ fashioned street BRAWL! Minus the fighting and meanness. Oh wait never mind, Roman Kilun will be there. Haha, hi Roman. Just joking. Don’t hurt me please. Whatever, he probably doesn’t read my blog anyways. Holy hell this sandwich is delicious. And by sandwich I mean beer. And by beer I mean NOB. See above explanation for joke understandingness.
Zack from Bikereg told me today that he noticed I began sobering up in my last blog post near the end. This will not be the case today. I swear I’m not a drunkard though. It’s just a single beer to help calm the nerves and induce sleep. Bicycle racing is all about uppers and downers. Gotta get high with Starbucks and get low get low with Lil Jon and a Guinness or eight. Or just one. I didn’t have any coffee today though.
Great, now I have sandwich juice and crumbs all over my sheets.
Here’s yesterday’s shot of yours truly soaking up the attention of at least 11 random passers by whilst on the podium. Just kidding. There were more people than that. But seriously, the mountain bikers all had huge sections of cheering and jeering fans!
Thanks for the picture, Todd (of Cycling Illustrated). Note to self: do not imitate a bat/bird learning to fly during next podium presentation.
This will be my last purposfully ridiculous manor of blog writing. For EVER.
KENNETT PETERSON 