I wrote this a few days ago, was going to go back and edit/put in some sweet jokes but didn’t have time. Gotta push it through to make room for the BIG one. Stay tuned for the next one. Philly starts tomorrow. I just had a dream last night that I got second twice in a row. Like we raced it Saturday, then again on Sunday. Same course. I’ve always thought that would be a great idea for a stage race. Same course like 10 days in a row. Instead of only the strong surviving it would be only the easily entertained surviving, since everyone else would quit out of boredom.
The Stuff I Did Last Weekend
A novel
by Kennett Peterson
(abridged version)
Saturday: rode bikes and shit
Sunday: rode more bikes and did some other shit too.
Monday: see Sunday.
Tuesday: took three craps from all the food I ate over the weekend.
(unabridged)
I slumped over the bars, gasping desperately at the semi-thin, hot mountain air near the base of Linden St. Both my feet were unclipped and spread wide. I was mostly off the road and the blind corner behind me was far enough away that cars could slam their brakes on in time to avoid hitting me if I happend to be farther out in the road than I thought I was. I hadn’t been seeing straight, but I when I’d finished that last effort I had enough wits about me swerve to the right and stop instead of the left. Currently, my crotch rested heavily on the top tube, supporting the weight that my dead legs no longer could. I was continuing to hyperventilate so much that I couldn’t regain my breath in the normal hunched over position that I usually assume after the last hard interval. I got off my bike and leaned over it, now resting my forehead on my top tube with my forearms dangling over the seat and bars. I almost laid down but thought better of it. I’ll should save that for when I really need it. This is just an interval. Lying down should only be for races. A minute later I was recovered enough to get back on the bike, barley able to swing my left leg over the saddle without my right leg buckling underneath. Bile leaked up into my throat but I didn’t throw it up. Throwing up is only for REALLY hard efforts. This was just a normal Sunday.
I’ll have to start before the weekend to bring you all up to speed on my super exciting, top-secret training preparation for the second half of the season.
After the Superior Morgul stage race two weekends ago, I took two days rest to top off my legs for a serious throw down. My goal was to to amass a huge amount of intensity with a fair amount of volume in the week and a half before Philly. Wednesday was my first of the hard days. I did 8×4 minutes VO2 on Old Stage, which is a steep, stair-stepped climb in north Boulder. It’s perfect for these four-minute intervals and close to work so I can get this workout done in two hours or less pretty easily.
The next day was more intervals, this time 8×1 minute with 10 minute rests. You may think this workout is easier since the intervals are 400% less (is this math correct, David?) But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong you damn fool! This is THE most intense effort you can do. Don’t even get me started on the “Well the 30-30 workout is harder because you only get 30 seconds of rest blah, blah, blah” bullshit. Thirty shmirty. When done properly, as in all out every single time, the 8×1 intervals will gladly escort all your hardest intervals to the guillotine. Unless you’re doing 9×1 minute. That would be harder actually.
Anyways, I really like this workout because it hurts so good and it require very little focus compared to a long threshold or VO2 interval. You just start out as hard as you can go and keep doing that until one minute is up. They went okay on Thursday, but not great. I had to stop pedaling for a second on the first one to avoid a deer, then I had some shifting issues on the fifth or sixth one and nutted myself infront of an oncoming school bus. I hope I at least entertained a few kids with that one. I rode home pretty shagged. (Shagged means tired in England. I think because they have lots of shaggy-haired dogs there that mope about with droopy, tired eyes begging for morsels of bread and biscuits. But everyone in England is either too poor to ever drop a crumb or too snooty and proud and posh to help out a stray dog. They aren’t stereotypes if they’re true).
Friday was a rest day. Adelaide’s sister, Lydia, and Lydia’s boyfriend, Jeff, were out of town for the weekend so we got to stay there in the guest room and look after the cat, Apollo. Their apartment is right next to Boulder Creek, which is more like a river right now. I already miss the sound of the rapids and being in the heart of downtown…so close to both Sprouts.
I woke up early on Saturday at 8:20, excited for my first double day in a long time. The morning called for a 26K TT in north Boulder. After that I’d head to Old Stage and murder myself with some more VO2 intervals. I stopped by home on my way to the TT registration and picked up my TT bike and aero gear. I signed in, did the rest of my warm up and got to the start line with five minutes to spare. A little too much time but I didn’t feel like warming up anymore. I was out of water and it was warm out.
Four minutes later and I found out that I had missed my start time by four minutes. Hey thanks for calling out my name race officials! I was right there so I don’t know how it happened, but I missed my start time. I’d originally read that we started at 11:35, saw that I was second off and assumed that meant that I started at 11:35:30. But, since everyone else seemed to get there on time (by actually reading their start times) I was at fault. Oh well. I started and road hard anyways to see what I could have done. I could have gone fast enough for second place (out of 16) but instead came in second to last. Jim Peterman won by a minute, I found $7 on the side of the road, switched out my bike, and headed to Old Stage for those intervals. The rest of the day was spent at Sprouts and the Boulder Creek fair with Adelaide, scrounging for free samples. I ate 12 garden burgers!
This brings us back to Sunday when our story began. Adelaide and I rode to Amante to meet Matt, who had agreed to join me on my interval quest that morning. I was only doing 6×4, but they would be hard and I didn’t want to completely blow myself up for the intervals that afternoon. But after the first three, Matt told me I should be going harder. If I’m going to take advice from anyone about going harder, I guess it’ll be from him. I pushed it a bit more on the fourth, eeked out a bit more of an effort on the fifth, then blew it all out on the sixth one. I rejoined with Adelaide and we rode home. I ate some granolla and laid on the couch.
Ride number two of Sunday you already heard about in that first paragraph. It was a good one. I averaged 74 watts home and eventually got things ready for a BBQ. Various bike and non-bike people showed up with appetites of large, but not nearly as large as mine. I never got full. Even Liam, who’d ridden seven hours that day up to the newly opened 12,500-foot Trail Ridge Road, only had two or three plates of food. Child’s play.
All week I hadn’t been able to decide upon Monday’s workout. Originally I wanted to do another double day, but after Sunday’s massacre there was no way I’d be able to put out any high-end watts for an interval day. I’d also wanted to do a really long ride that day, like six plus hours, but was worried I’d get sick from that. It seems that whenever I do a really hard block of training I get sick from that one last day where I do too much. So instead of that, I did a medium ride. 4.5 hours with Nick and Liam. We started out with Adelaide, Steven, Haley, and Zack for the first 20 minutes out of town before taking off on our own.
A steady, strong headwind slowed us as we made our way up from Lyons on highway 9. Despite the hard riding and racing over the last two weeks, my legs felt good somehow. I churned away at the cranks until my legs felt like butter themselves. They were weak and shaky when I stood up to climb but I could continue putting out the power despite this. Up at Peak to Peak highway, I kept drilling the pace until I was, left alone by myself to wonder how I still had anything left. We regrouped and rode down Lefthand, stopped to fill our bottles at the spring, and continued down to Lee Hill and then to town. We went our separate ways from there, with me opting to hit up the gas station for a liter of Dr. Pepper and a bag of potato chips.
Fueled for more climbing, I went up Linden, crossed the dirt, and topped out on Sunshine with plenty left in the tank. I would have liked to descend and hit Magnolia to Nederland (adding on another hour and a half) but I thought better of it and coasted down the mountain to home. I mean the apartment in which we were cat sitting. I think I did things just perfect this weekend in terms of riding. Even one more hour would have been overkill. Equally important and fun was the mentally relaxing aspect of the weekend. Hanging out at the creek, swimming in the pool, and walking around the ongoing festival were all a great change from the normal weekend, whatever that is. It was definitely a ying and yang affair. Super strenuous riding, super chill recovery.
KENNETT PETERSON 