Mid-race mantra: “Don’t go to bed with any regrets tonight Kennett. You won’t be able to sleep. Don’t go to bed with any regrets tonight Kennett. You won’t be able to sleep.”
Seconds after the race ended. “You’re getting no sleep tonight.”
When you’re out of the running and roll in mid-pack or off the back, you get depressed. When you’re close but just off the mark, you dwell. Dwelling is harder to get over. For one thing, it takes longer to finish a solid dwell session. What if I’d done this? Why didn’t I do that? If I’d only done this instead. All the sheets would be ripped off the bed and wrapped tightly around my legs by morning. I was in for a long night of tossing and turning.
How it went down:
Since I was at the front for the start, I decided to attack immediately once the race was de-neutralized. It didn’t go anywhere of course but I continued to set easy tempo on the front for the next five minutes just to stay out of trouble for the first couple turns, which are littered with cones and potholes. Like I’ve said with every bog post account of this race, the San Dimas circuit is an incredibly sketchy day. While I do love the course, every year it’s dangerous enough for me to question whether I’ll ever come back. The answer is of course yes, but I still do consider it. There’s road furniture, positioning is important to not get gapped off so everyone rides aggressively, there’s cones everywhere, there’s oncoming traffic around blind, downhill corners, and the road surface is less than smooth. This is my fifth time here yet I’ve never crashed, so I guess it’s not as sketchy as it seems. Ha. Tell that to Phil Gaimon.
I lost position on the second lap due to my fear of crashing and going fast through corners, and was too far back on the KOM climb. The race broke into three groups, with me in the third and largest group. For a few kilometers I worried that I’d blown the race and my day was over. It all came together on the feed zone climb though. Everyone was still fresh. Good. I tried positioning better for the KOM climb that third lap and did slightly better, but still missed out on the small front group that got away for the next couple miles. Shortly after the two groups merged back together, I attacked on the feed zone hill. Actually, that was on the fifth lap. It seems that I have no recollection whatsoever of the fourth lap.
Looking back after the feed zone hill descent, I saw a massive gap opening up already. I put my head down and kept going. A group of six or seven caught me right before the toll-booth, which is situated in the middle of the road, and we worked well leading up to the KOM climb. A few more guys bridged to us there and I think we might have lost one guy as well.
I’m terrible at keeping track of who’s in the break but I know that for the majority of the race we had 10 guys:
Anton Varabei (Jet Fuel)
David Santos (KHS)
Luis Amaran (Jamis)
Serghei Tevetkov (Jelly Belly)
Clement Chavrier (Bissell)
Kit Recca (Horizon)
Daniel Eaton (Canyon)
Bruno Langlois (5-Hour Energy)
Coulton Hartrich (Unattached…somebody pick this guy up!)
Most of the bigger teams were represented so the field was left with little reason to chase. That was a good thing since our cohesion was shaky for the next lap or two.
As usual, my desire to not get caught outweighed my desire to win, which meant that I took some extra pulls to help ensure we stayed away. I had great legs and never felt under pressure or tired the whole day. If I lost, it wouldn’t be because I was getting dropped, that much I knew for sure, so I figured working it for the next few laps wouldn’t hurt.
One guy who had the opposite idea and decided to sit at the back all day long and never come to the front except to take KOM and sprint points was Amaran. Maybe Jamis didn’t want the move to stick since none of their GC guys were in the move. Who knows, but it annoyed me.
Over the next five laps I didn’t go for any of the sprint or KOM points, just to make sure that I was as fresh as possible for the finish. My plan was to attack balls out on the final climb or follow moves on the last lap. I was going for the stage win, not a jersey.
We heard that our gap was over two minutes with a lap to go, which meant that we’d stay away. We began sitting up a bit and conserving, looking at each other, skipping pulls, and getting ready for the first attacks.
Daniel Eaton of Canyon was the first to go. He chose the feed zone climb and I was quickly on him. I pulled through super short, not really wanting to get away since I figured Clement (Bissell) would just sit on the front no matter what and pull. He’d been the most ambitious about keeping the pace up in the break since he was the best placed GC guy out of all of us and was just going for time. Eaton and I were swallowed up on the descent and the attacks flew for the next kilometer or two, then that was it. Everyone realized Clement was just going to sit on the front and keep the pace up, killing all but the most ambitious attempts to get away. Besides, we only had a short downhill section and then the KOM. That’s where the real action would take place.
Or so I thought. Clement continued setting the pace on the climb, albeit pretty easy on the lower slopes, leaving everyone with too much oxygen and punch in their legs for me to get away when I attacked half way up. I looked back at the top and saw Bruno Langlois gritting his teeth just 10 meters back with the rest of the group strung out behind on his wheel. Damn it. Should have gone earlier on the climb.
I sat up on the flat headwind section at the top and we rocketed down the quick descent to the finish straight. 2K to go. Clement went to the front again and drilled it. I should have gone with 500 meters, just for the hell of it since I knew I wouldn’t win the sprint, but I didn’t and started from last wheel with 250 meters. I finished a disappointing 7th but at least managed to avoid a nasty crash after the finish line. A group of photographers, who were standing in the middle of the road just 100 feet after the finish line, forced us to swerve around them at the last second as we grabbed brakes at 40mph. Eaton, Varabei, and Santos crashed into a parked truck in the process and destroyed themselves and their bikes.
The point of a telephoto lens is to capture images from afar, meaning you don’t have to stand ON the finish line to get a good shot. This was total mindlessness from the photographers. But, just like the riders, photographers, officials, volunteers, etc are all part of the race too, and are bound to make mistakes, just like us.
Top three on the stage:
1st Anton Varabei (Jet Fuel)
2nd David Santos (KHS)
3rd Daniel Eaton (Canyon)
Varabei won the race to the finish line and also to the side of the promoter’s truck. Poor truck. He’s a big fellah.
That’s a Jet-Fueled Varabei-sized dent in the side there.
I apologize for the lack of pictures. I feel worse and worse about inserting others’ work into my blog. But I have no moneys! Some day when I’m above the poverty line I’ll buy them I swear. There’s more images of all the races and all the categories and all the stages at Cycling Illustrated.com.
Here’s one on the KOM climb that highlights my good side. In hindsight I wish I’d gone for the KOMs. Oh well. You know what they say: “There’s always next year. Unless you die first. Or stop racing, which are basically the same thing.” I’m pretty sure that’s a saying.
Colin, Tim, and I had Dan in the feed zone with endless bottles of sweet, sweet Osmo. Every hand off was effortless and perfect. So for that, thank you Dan. Colin spent the day in the pack, surfing through the carnage that would see only 45 guys out of the 150 starters make the main front group. Tim, who also made the main front group, spent multiple laps off in no man’s land by himself, just 50 seconds behind us at one point. He got caught on the last lap at the top of the KOM. Just needed one more guy to bridge the gap.
I was hoping to at least move into the top 10 GC since the field was a minute back, but I only managed 11th. Today I have the crit to make up a few seconds, though my chances of that aren’t great.
Written later after the crit:
The crit didn’t go great. Didn’t go terribly either. I never made it to the front to go with any moves. I just wasn’t aggressive enough to get up there. I moved down a spot on GC to 12th. It was a good weekend of racing though. Colin, Dan, Tim and I capped it off at the Inn N Out Burger with my friend, Will, who’d come to watch the race, then later we teamed up against a poor girl on a 4 vs 1 blind date at the frozen yogurt place (set up via Tinder), and ended the night at Del Taco. We binged on fast food like frat boys drink. The end of a stage race often calls for this sort of behavior. It’s the cyclist way of life. Plus, with Redlands starting just three days later, we had to pack those sugar and saturated fat stores to full capacity! I’m happy to announce that I’ll be racing with Landis Trek for the week. The temporary wolf pack of Colin, Dan, Tim, and I has sadly been disbanded. Another will take its place in the coming days. It’s a strange lifestyle being a lone composite racer. Redlands will be my last hurrah in the States until May. Sweden is calling at last and my composite days will come to an end as well.
To the race promoter of San Dimas, all the volunteers, officials, and everyone else, thanks for making this weekend great and I’ll see you next year.
Oh, and as a footnote, I’d like to thank Josh Berry and his mom for driving out from Redlands to pick me up from the Azusa Super 8, and in doing so sparing me the 4-5 hours worth of bus rides and transfers I’d have had to take in order to get here to Redlands. I owe him a couple tows to the front of the peloton now!
“Dude, I passed out in the tub. I had to crawl out man. It’s not funny. I wasn’t breathing for like five minutes. I ran out of oxygen. Oh man, it was waaaay too hot in there.”
Tim Rugg lay on the rug…carpet I mean, having just crawled out from the bathroom while Dan and I watched from the bed. It’s a tight living space here in the Super 8 with four guys and 13 bikes strategically crammed into every nook and cranny. Rugg had been “salting,” according to Dan, in the bathtub with Epsom salt while we’d been out riding.
Left on his own, Tim had himself a little picnic of sweet potato while watching Breaking Bad on his laptop, salting his legs with that magical Epsom. Somehow he lost track of time for an hour and sat in the tub a little too long, apparently passing out, face up I assume.
When he emerged from the steaming bathroom, struggling on hands and knees, then curled into a ball on the floor, Dan and I offhandedly asked if he was okay. Getting no response, we assume he was fine. He lay on the ground for about 10 minutes before he came to.
“What the hell guys? Thanks for being heroes.”
I’m counting on more of these memorable events take place this weekend here at San Dimas. The four-man pack includes Dan Wolf, Tim Rugg, Colin Gibson, and myself. For the last month, Dan and Tim have been on a cross-country journey, hitting up road and mountain bike races along the way from Harrisonburg Virginia to California. Funding has been provided in part by their own wallets as well as an assortment of sponsors back at their home base, including Pro Tested Gear. I got to test out one of the Pro Tested skinsuits in today’s time trial. They’re nearing the end and grand finale of their journey, which includes San Dimas and Redlands to top it off.
Colin picked me up at the airport late on Wednesday night. Our journey here was a little less fantastical.
Tim and I rockin some Pro Tested Gear.
I pre-road the Glendora Mountain Road time trial course on Thursday. I felt fine for having jet legs. Chipotle served as lunch and dinner. There’s really no cheaper, easier, and race-nutritious way to get meals on the road than Chipotle. They should really think about sponsoring a cycling team at some point because, for some reason, basically every cyclist I know loves Chipotle.
Stage 1: the dreaded uphill time trial. I hate this thing. It’s a 4.3-mile hill climb with switchback after never ending switchback. Historically, I’ve gone out way too hard, thinking I could do a top 20 or something unrealistic like that by holding 460 watts. I always blow up half way through. I took a different approach this year and underrated my legs’ ability instead. While I’ve hoped and thought about a top 20 placing in years past, this year I planned for a top 40 and rode at a conservative pace. When things started hurting real bad at the half way point, I backed off, fearing the traditional implosion which would see me piddle in at a measly 370 watts. I backed off and kept things uncomfortable, but realistic. With 2K to go I realized I’d gone way too easy and immediately lost motivation to even pick things up at the end. I finally mustered up some courage for the final 50 seconds and sprinted in like an idiot. I’ve done two other time trials this year, and I went 100% for those, collapsed over the bars and coughed up bile afterwards. After this one, I felt like I’d done a moderately hard interval. I knew I’d wasted the day.
I came in at 53rd place, three whole places better than last year. Wow congrats Kennett, you pansy! I won’t make excuses; I rode like a damn wimp. Like a man with everything to lose and nothing to gain. Like a guy who’d been working on a company project for months on end, putting in early mornings and long nights, then, at the eve of the deadline, he’d gotten a call informing him that he’d just inherited $100 million from a recently deceased, long-lost uncle, so therefore he just sort of packed it in and drifted through the final days of work, soft pedaling and dreaming about sunning himself on his yacht in the years to come.
The only difference is that I DID have something to lose and EVERYTHING to gain, since I haven’t won that lottery yet. Every race day is an opportunity to put those long hours in the saddle to use, to show what you’ve been up to that winter, and to earn your keep. So yeah, I completely fucked up my entire 2014 campaign already.
While I rode like a frail-legged jerk, my former teammate Ian Crane of Jamis smashed that hill to oblivion with a 6th place! Now that was cool to see. I love it when friends and former teammates get a taste of success. I do risk entering a dangerous zone of contentedness though, since, unfortunately, every year I make new friends in this sport. Pretty soon I’ll be happy after every race no matter how I do since someone I know will have had a good ride. I hate this new compassionate limp dick I’ve become.
That night, as I was talking to Adelaide on the phone outside on the motel patio, I felt a rumble. An earthquake. I got downstairs into the parking lot, hoping the shaking would pick up a bit so I could see some carnage, some explosions, some double story collapses, car collisions, explosions, blood, guts, last screeching screams of life. I’m only being honest hear. While I don’t want people to get killed, I do love me a good natural disaster, and living through one would make a great blog post. But sadly, things calmed down pretty quickly. A panicked Japanese couple came running out of their room to the parking lot 10 minutes later with their shoes off and their suitcases packed. A little late if they’d actually needed to abandon the building. Their delayed, half-hearted reaction reminds me of my time trial effort. There’s always tomorrow, which is actually today now.
Saturday (today)—Stage 2 and the whole reason I’m here racing at San Dimas. The circuit race is going to be a throw down since the winner of yesterday’s TT, James Oram of Bissell, only has two teammates. I’m expecting Jamis to go monkey poop today. Ape shit.
That is, assuming someone gets me on a gall dang team for Redlands gosh darn it all! Jeez lo-wheeze, dag nab it. Okay that’s the last time I beg and plead about it, shoot. Sorry for all that dirty language. I have a foul fucking mouth I know.
If I can’t do Redlands I think I might get one more race weekend in Colorado at either the Front Range Classic or the Louisville crit before heading off to Sweden. Either way, Redlands or no, I have zero real complaints in life these days. It’s pretty awesome to ride every day and race all the time, even if I’m living off a dime (yeah I rhymed that on purpose). To all the idiot pros out there that say, “it’s just a job,” shut the hell up. Working in a toll booth is just a job. Typing on a computer all day is just a job. Waiting tables is just a job. This is a privilege and I won’t forget it.
I hate it when someone starts out a sentence with “so.” It does nothing except increase the word count, which I’m not wholly against as you can tell by this completely off-topic, unnecessary paragraph. Tacking on ‘so’ to the beginning of your sentence adds no value to whatever it is that you’re trying, yet failing, to say. Yet, I catch myself doing it all the time. Usually I go back and delete it, but sometimes it slips on by. So from now on if you see me doing it, please let me know.
Okay, onto the races. The first was the Candelas circuit race, which is put on by the CU cycling team. It’s an out and back race that goes up a hill, down a hill, repeat. We were slated to do 11 laps, but then this happened and they shortened it to 9:
I received many compliments about my googles. They worked perfectly. And no, I was never cold during this race, despite how miserable it looks. In fact, at one point I even tried to unzip my jacket a bit to cool off. No joke. Photo courtesy of Dejan Smaic of Sports Images, who looked to be having as much of a blast out there as us.
The snow was no surprise since it had been coming down for hours before the race started. But what I didn’t think about happening was this (the bike freezing up):
Even by the first lap I’d already lost the use of my cassette’s 11 tooth cog. More would come.
I set a hard pace up the second pitch of the climb on the first lap and got away with one other guy briefly, then it was just me until mid-way into the descent. A different rider bridged up, then we were both caught on the climb. I got away again, this time with former teammate Nick Bax of Rio Grande. I figured this was the race, done and over with. The field, which was small to begin with, was in tatters and the first chase group’s impetus looked to be waning.
We could see them every time we rounded the U turn at the top of the hill and passed them by, going the opposite direction. And when I say ‘see’ I mean we could peer into their quickly fleeting souls and smell the figurative blood from the gaping wound we’d gleefully torn. Making eye contact with your prey like that is the ultimate satisfaction because you get to witness the damage you’ve done from the front instead of only hearing it from behind. The stare down went both ways I guess. And for that matter, we were the prey, not them.
We got caught a few laps later by a group of three that contained Matt Gates of Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, Taylor Shelden of 5-Hour Energy, and Jon Tarkington of Natural Grocers. Once they caught us, the carrot having been consumed, the pace slowed down quite a bit. It didn’t look like the next larger group behind had a chance of catching us, so we all shared turns grinding out a slogging tempo in the hard-blowing snow, losing more frozen gears with every passing minute.
It must have looked like a junior race on the downhill, with everyone quickly spinning out in their 18-tooth cogs and tucking. And on the way up it probably resembled a master’s race with everyone slowly grinding away at a cadence 40, cross chained in their big ring…that is, if you were lucky enough to have access to your big ring. I lost the ability to shift to my small ring half way into the race, while I heard that others got stuck the other way around.
While everyone was certainly losing gears with every lap (the last time up some only had a single working gear left), I think I was the only one with a malfunctioning steer tube. I’d had this happen throughout the winter when it would be that perfect temperature where the pavement was 33 degrees and wet, and the air temperature and my bike were below freezing, meaning the thing would end up resembling a nasty popsicle (see above). The water gets down into the steer tube, expands as ice (Science Rules!), and seizes up the front end, making steering difficult and eventually impossible. On lap two I’d nearly crashed into the cones at the bottom of the hill and taken Nick out in the process. After that I took every corner at about 4 mph.
With two to go, Nick attacked our group. I watched him go and could have and really should have followed him. But it was a cross headwind on the climb and I felt that the other three guys were plenty motivated and strong to keep the gap in check as Nick flailed away, wasting energy in the strong wind. I wanted to attack with a lap to go, not two, since I thought I’d play things conservatively for once. Stupid me. Nick suddenly had a gap of 22 seconds by the top of the climb when Taylor climbed off his bike since he had no working gears left.
It was up to me, Jon, and Matt to pull Nick bax. Get it? Pull Nick bax. Like we’re pulling him back except I replaced back with Nick’s last name, which is Bax. Oh man. Good stuff right there.
Jon and Matt were dying a bit and I realized that I’d left things way too late. Nick now had 35 or 40 seconds and his gap was still growing as we began the final climb. We slowed down half way up the climb, silently and secretly watching each other. I attacked on the second steep ramp and dropped Matt and John but only managed to close half the gap to my former teammate by the top. Nick soloed to a well-deserved win and I took 2nd. That makes 3 second places this year already. Ughhh.
The winner, Strongman Nick:
Oh well. It was good to see a friend win and I came away with some cash and seven pieces of pizza from Papa Johns that, for some amazing reason, decided to stop by with a bunch of free pizzas. Plus, this race had probably the best ever registration/post-race hangout lounge imaginable.
Nick and Camillo warming up with cold pizza and a hot fire.
The second day of racing at the Stazio crit was, for me at least, much less memorable, though still a good day and a fun time. It was also like 90 degrees warmer and sunny, which I had no complaints about.
I showed up early to watch the finish of Adelaide’s race only to find out that just a lap before I got there, they had a bad crash that called for the race to be neutralized and an ambulance to be sent.
During this fiasco, I realized that I needed an ambulance, so to speak, for my bike. The shifting had just stopped working when I rolled into the parking lot, due to all the road grit from yesterday’s race. Luckily, a mechanic traveling with one of the collegiate teams took it upon himself to completely overhaul everything. Turned out that while the cable and housing were definitely gritty, the real problem was actually just a worn out shifter. My bike, with its components from last year (yes a FULL year old, oh my god!) is falling apart. Components these days are not meant to be raced and ridden hard for a full year, which is sad and pathetic in my point of view. While I do usually have what appears to be a fairly dirty bike, I clean the drivetrain every day and replace the cables and housing every two months. That’s more than anyone I know. Still, the shifters are completely shot, I’ve broken and had to replace my front derailleur, rear derailleur, and two brake calipers since last March. Plus I went through what, five frames last season? Those were mainly due to changing teams and whatnot, except for the frame that I broke in a crash. I’ve spent a small fortune with bike upkeep in the last year and I’ll be heading to Europe with a bank account that will allow only rice and beans. I’m fine with this though, since having races in the legs, a working bike, and a fast set of wheels is crucial for success. Even more so than being able to afford kale.
The crit got underway. I followed some attacks but was always on the back foot, chasing and bridging instead of being there when they first got away. My legs felt fine, but I somehow managed to miss the winning move of 10 guys half way into the race. I tried to solo bridge up there as it went but only made it half the distance. Throughout the next 20 minutes I took some pulls and yelled at some people (sorry) to get out of the way if they weren’t going to help pull through. Of course no one was, since half the teams had someone in the break and the rest were all too afraid to stick their noses in the wind for two seconds. Josh Yeaton of Horizon easily won out of the break, which finished 20 seconds ahead of the bunch. I sat up before our field sprint since I didn’t feel like risking a crash for 11th place. It was a good workout at least. Afterwards, Adelaide and I went to Sprouts, then I sat in the sauna for the 4th day of my Osmo heat training protocol (for San Dimas). Two to go. It’s getting easier.
Oh, and one last thing before I wrap this post up. Thanks to Clif Bar, I’ll be supplied with race food for a good part of the season. They obviously don’t need me repping their products to increase brand awareness or make a profit for 2014. It makes me pretty happy that they’re willing to help a little guy out just to be nice.
I’ve always felt like I’ve done this race before, even though I know I never have. I think it was from all my winters training in Tucson and, while riding parts of the courses, having other cyclists I was riding with say, “This is part of the Tucson Bicycle Classic.” So therefore I felt like I’ve done it…..okay switching topics real quick because I realize this is a very boring start to this post. Currently I’m listening in on a conversation that’s taking place here at Gate A4 in the Tucson airport. A 300+ pound woman driving a Rascal scooter is complaining about how the hotel she was at had terrible food. “Inedible.” “Stale.” “Awful.” These are the words she’s using to describe it. “I hardly ate a thing!” she just said. I just told Adelaide that I doubted that was true and that I thought that what she probably meant was that she ate all the things. Adelaide said that’s not funny, given the current state she’s in herself with a bottomless pit for a stomach. This was her first stage race and therefore her first experience with a stage race appetite. She also road 18 hours this week, so that probably has something to do with being extra hungry as well. By the way, she won all three stages of her race (and the GC too of course) and is now a cat 3, so the sandbagging will be less harsh in the future. For the time being. Maybe.
She still forgets to put the bib straps over her shoulders sometimes.
Anyways, we’ve been staying at local Tucson racer Joey Luliani’s mom’s house. His mom, Deseray, has helped in every possible way since I got here, including taking me grocery shopping, making liters of coffee every morning, driving ex-teammate Colin Gibson and I to the races, being in the feed zone for us, and doing airport pickups and drop offs. Our stay was very pleasant and both Adelaide and I are looking forward to coming back next year for racing and training.
Typical breakfast for a big day of training or racing. GF pancakes, yogurt, peanut butter, honey, banana, berries, green tea, and coffee. Adelaide rode 6 hours to the top of Mt. Lemmon (the real top up to the ski lift, which is 27.5 miles of climbing). I went to mile marker 7.
Stage 1 (the prologue should always be the most decisive stage right?): a 3.2-mile rolling time trial. I was 5th. This was a bit of a surprise given the fact that, historically, I’m not the best time trialist in the world. Or the best time trialist in a pro/am event. Or even the best time trialist in a cat 3 field. It’s been an average winter for me in terms of TT preparation: I rode the bike five times since August, including this race. So the fact that the hunk o junk bike was even working and shifting properly was a relief. Getting a good result was a bonus. I chalk it up to being really heavy and capitalizing on the false flat downhill tailwind section of the course (I now hold the Strava KOM for another descent thank you very much). Jamis went one-two with Gregory Brenes and Ben Jaques-Maynes tied on time, Mac Cassin of Horizon was third, two seconds down, and Jim Peterman 4th at seven seconds. I was 8 seconds down. If I’d just gone one second harder I’d be the faster of the Petermans. Oh well.
In case you were wondering who Gregory Brenes is, like I was, this is one of the results that Google Images comes up with. This makes him pretty alright in my book.
Stage 2 was an 82-mile road race with straight, wide-open roads and four corners per lap. It was super sketchy. This was due to rider error of course, probably from the early season jitters. There were a lot of crashes and a lot of close calls. I got lucky on lap One when a guy touched wheels with someone in front of him on the descent and went down hard at 40mph. I was full on the brakes for five long seconds praying to God that if He parted the seas I’d forever be a believer and devote myself to preaching his word for the rest of my days. The guy’s bike went right and his body went left just in time and I squeezed through while others crashed around me. I sprinted back to the peloton, immediately thinking, “Just kidding, I had my fingers crossed, you fool. I get you with that every time, God! I’ll never be a believer!”
I followed wheels on the “uphill” section but never really attacked except for once or twice. I didn’t think anything was going to get away until maybe the last lap due to the block headwind on the climbing part of the course. Mainly I just tried to not crash and not go over the yellow line too often. Both were inevitable. The entire field echeloned over into the left lane at times in the crosswind. An irate official would drive up between us and the left curb when there was room and aggressively usher us back over to the right. “If you fucking assholes won’t move back across the yellow line after ten minutes of me honking, let’s see if two tons of steel will do it!!” That’s not an exact quote but the expletives are.
The final few kilometers were false flat uphill with a crosswind. I picked my way to the front of the field as guys began popping off. I was hoping to get some bonus seconds in the sprint, but ended up lying in my back with 400 meters to go. I’d been sitting in the top 15 riders of our somewhat diminished field when two idiots took each other out. God took his revenge. I catapulted over the bars, did a one-armed hand plant, and landed on my back with my bike still attached to my feet. I escaped unharmed. Correction: God tried to take his revenge. Muwahahahah, not even God can touch me! It’s literally impossible that I’ll ever get hurt while riding my bike.
Matteo Dal-Cin had taken a flier with a kilometer or so to go, countering Kevin Mullervy of Champion Systems, and capitalized on a moment’s hesitation in the field. He took the solo win so we weren’t even vying for first at that point, and there’s little chance I would have out-sprinted Daniel Jaramillo of Jamis (2nd) and Daniel Holloway of Octane (3rd).
Stage 3: a four-corner circuit race that was even sketchier than the road race, still mainly due to all of us idiot riders. Myself not included of course. I never do anything wrong.
At one point I was moving up the right gutter when someone chopped in front of me without looking over. I had to grab the brakes hard and curse even harder. Not four seconds after that someone else started to come over on me, although this time he had enough room to do it safely since there was now a gap between me and the guy who’d just chopped me. But I wasn’t having any of it and I slapped him hard on the ass and yelled at him too since I needed to take my anger out on someone. He yelped and cried out, “Why’d you hit me?” I thought about apologizing half a minute later when I realized he probably didn’t deserve it and that he hadn’t really done anything wrong, but whatever. He was behind me now, meaning he no longer existed. That right there was the mentality of the weekend. “If I can’t see you, you don’t exist.” More so this race than others, guys failed to look behind them or out the corner of their eye when they moved to the left or right, which is why I think there are so many crashes.
So back to the race, I sat in pretty much the whole time and didn’t do anything at all. I followed like three moves and attacked once, half-heartedly. That was it. Nothing was sticking permanently. That much was obvious to me. Jamis had it locked down and the course, like yesterday, made attacks short-lived thanks to a block headwind on the rolling climb. I avoided the crashes—there were some bad ones today and the ambulance was used—and I finished in the field, moving down to 6th GC since Travis McCabe got some bonus seconds during the intermediate sprint the day before and today as well. Josh Yeaton and Fabio Calabria of Horizon went 1-2, while Jaramillo of Jamis was 3rd. This was a terrific result for Horizon and proof that they’re well along their way to the top of the list amongst the best US teams. It’s great to see so many Front Range riders tearing it up at the national level. 4 of the top 10 GC positions were taken up by guys on the Front Range, with Horizon, Rio Grande, and myself showing that good things are coming from this region at the pro/am level.
Since pack positioning is a weak point of mine, doing a bigger race like this is important before something like San Dimas or Redlands with fields of 160 and 200. Battling for wheels isn’t something you really need to do at a local race with 50 or 60 guys. With a stronger field of 90 this weekend, and centerline rules, I noticed that I was pretty rusty when it came to aggressive positioning. It was a good warm up and great for getting the cobwebs repaired. Wait, is that how the saying goes?
Top 10 GC
1) Brenes Gregory Jamis Hagens Berman 5:04:02
2) Jacques-Maynes Ben Jamis Hagens Berman s.t.
3) Cassin Mac Horizon/Einstein Bagels :02
4) McCabe Travis Team SmartStop :06
5) Peterman James Team Rio Grande :07
6) Peterson Kennett Firefighters Upsala CK :08
7) Jaramillo Diez Daniel Jamis Hagens Berman :08
8) Eaton Daniel Canyon Bicycles :08
9) Buick William Team Rio Grande :10
10) Magallanes Juan POS Cycling :11
It would be nice to have a more decisive stage to break things up a bit, as you can see by the minimal time gaps. Maybe an uphill finish on the backside of Gate’s Pass with loops around the TT course? That would be a much better, and safer, circuit race in my opinion. Both of the road stages were pretty easy so the only way to move up was bonus sprint primes. Good for sprinters, bad for Kennetts. I guess I should have just done better in the TT. All in all, it was a good race and a great trip. New friends were made, old tan lines restored, and a worn-down central nervous system repaired. Resting the whole week I was in Tucson before the race made my legs just a tad sluggish and it wasn’t as much fun as riding hard, but it really helped me feel fresher and in the long run I know it will pay off. I’ll be back next year. Tucson in the winter is pretty awesome.
I still need a team for Redlands, and I’m holding out hope that something will present itself in the last minute. If not, once April 7th rolls around and Redlands is in the past, like a rider behind me it’ll be as if it never existed and I won’t care about it one way or the other.
Or in this case, it’s knowing when to call it ‘two months’, which is the length of time I went without a rest week. Most people come down here to Tucson either fresh or relatively out of shape and leave cracked after a week or two of hard training. I’m the opposite. I came down here in need of a rest week.
I didn’t plan it this way. I had huge ambitions of finally hit a 30-hour week, which is something I haven’t done since I was a cat new 3. “So what you’re saying, Kennett, is that your ambition is to train like a cat 3 again?”
No, no, no you’ve got it all wrong I swear!
It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing; I’d been keeping close track of my training, including paying extra attention to my Excel spreadsheet bar graph, which compares every year of training I’ve ever done since getting on the bike.
While I was certainly paying attention to it, that doesn’t mean I was being completely smart about it. In fact, the more I trained and saw the big numbers roll in, the more drive I felt to completely smash what I’d done last year. As of this week, I’ve done 41 more hours this year than last, with both “years” starting in mid November when I began training. That doesn’t sound like a lot since it’s only an average of 2.5 extra hours per week, but adds up.
Still though, there are so many guys out there that train quite a few more hours than me. I’ve only averaged 19 hours a week for the past 8 weeks. From talking to people and reading interviews/books/blogs/whatnot, there seem to be plenty of guys out there that average 20 or more. Maybe they’re riding at a different pace or not including rest/sick weeks, or they’re just stronger-bodied and stronger-willed than me. Who knows how they do it but I sure can’t yet.
At times, I catch myself wondering if I really do train hard enough. It’s difficult to get a grasp of what “hard” really means, since there’s no ceiling to it. You can always do more. You can always try just a little bit harder. I guess being smart is more important, and finding the best ratio of work-to-pay-off is what gets results.
Usually it takes me one or possibly two days of easy riding to recover from a 2- or 3-day block of hard riding. I did intervals and rode long on Monday and Tuesday this week, rode easy Wednesday morning and flew on Wednesday night. I did an easy 2 hours on Thursday, feeling worse than I thought I should since it was my second day of rest, but still figured I’d be good to go on Thursday for 5 hours and 3×15″ intervals on Mt. Lemmon. I did one set of intervals on Lemmon, shrugged off the fairly poor performance due to fatigue, and started the second set. Wait. Shrugged it off to fatigue? Wasn’t I planning on doing 6 hours the following day, including the Shootout in the morning and Old Pueblo GP in the evening? I decided to be smart and turned around to go home a few minutes into the second set (actually I kept riding for 20 minutes up to mile post 4 so I could write “2.5 hours” in my training log instead of just 2.25 hours…neurotic much?)
That night I got almost no sleep after picking Adelaide up at the airport at midnight. Part of my inability to sleep was the late night drive and the even later night bike build so Adelaide could do the Shootout early the next morning, but there was something else there too. Some extra deep fatigue that made me tired but wasn’t letting me fall asleep. I pondered, like I have been recently, about a few things from the past week and a half that had been worrying me just a bit.
1) My left quad had just suddenly developed a strange stabbing pain when I bent my knee.
2) I’d been able to do my intervals and ride long day after day for weeks, and even during my rest days I’d been able to climb fairly easily at 300 watts up Lee Hill (my rest days involve climbing both sides of Lee Hill and sometimes Deer Trail). The constant “openness” of my legs was encouraging as well as startling. This is what happens when you never fully rest.
3) My sleep pattern had been way out of whack. I’d have trouble sleeping for a day or two, then the next couple nights I’d sleep for 10 hours straight. (Last night I slept for 11 hours).
4) Strange parts of my body were aching without having been used for any activity. Last night my forearms ached for some reason. I hadn’t lifted anything heavy for days and I hadn’t even ridden long since Tuesday.
5) I’ve been EXTREMELY scared of getting sick. I keep getting imaginary sore throats and sick-trickles in the back of my mouth (just made up that word–sick trickle. I like it).
This last warning sign was definitely my subconscious telling me to back off and rest. Also, from looking at my “Graph of Training Years” Excel spreadsheet, I’ve noticed that I tend to get sick the first week of March just about every year. As of today, I’m still holding strong.
With all of this in mind, I decided to not do the Shootout Saturday morning. When I ended up not falling asleep until 6:30AM, I decided to not race Old Pueblo GP. It was a good decision. Adelaide was practically dropping me on the way to meet Quinn and Allie at their house to ride over there together and watch the race.
But wait there’s still hope!
I had been planning this sort of catastrophic breakdown and ensuing super compensation all along, just not quite to this degree. And while I wanted to make it another 10 days through next weekend’s Tucson Bicycle Classic before resting, I guess I can live with this scenario. Recovering down here in Tucson isn’t ideal because it’s so warm and the rides offer a fresh landscape on which to smash the pedals, but it’s the right decision.
I can tell the difference between truly overtrained and just overreaching and I’m happy it’s the later. The main difference, between the two, for me anyways, is the ambition. I still want to get out there, which means I’m tired but not utterly drained. My power, through Tuesday that is, was still on the rise as well, so I think I’m in the clear as long as I’m smart about the next week. I’ll still race Tucson Bicycle Classic but I’m resting (for the most part) until then. And when I get back to Boulder on Sunday night I’ll continue to rest until I’m fully recovered and fresh for San Dimas, Redlands, and Europe.
I knew it would be difficult reigning in my willingness to train after leaving SmartEtailing and being given all this time. This was the first true test. The old Kennett would have finished Friday’s ride, struggled through the Shootout and Old Pueblo yesterday, and would have slogged through the originally planned 5-6 hours today as well, just to get in those 31 hours. But I’m smarter now. This week will only be 17 hours, which definitely counts as a rest week…
By complete fault of my own, I misunderstood my race schedule, which was sent a few weeks ago. I chalk it up to Excel not being opened full screen on my laptop, as well as the fact that sometimes when you want to see something really badly, you see it even if it isn’t there. While I thought Tour of Normandy would be my first European race, I’ll have to wait another three weeks, which isn’t too harsh I guess. I’ll be racing Loir et Cher, a 5-day UCI 2.2 in the middle of France. I’ve done some research on the race’s website (circa 1999) and it looks like it’s hillier than Normandy with long stages, most of which are about 200K with no TT. Normandy would have been awesome, but Loir et Cher, albeit much harder to pronounce, will be a fine substitute.
Because I won’t be heading west across the Pacific to get to Europe for a while (I heard it’s quicker that direction since the earth spins counterclockwise), my race schedule for the next month looks a little more familiar: San Dimas then Redlands! And by “Redlands!” I mean I hope I can find a team to guest ride with. If any of you know a team that’s searching for someone really strong, tell them to take me instead. JK, JK, LOLZ. No but seriously, I need help finding a team. I talked to USAC and they assured me that, as a continental rider, I can indeed guest ride for an amateur team, and I also have permission from my team to do so of course.
Descending down into town after that final lap of the circuit race and its hellish climb felt so good last year and I’d love to improve on 17th GC to something in the single digits.
Photo credit: Evan Hyde
PS well whadya’ know? That’s my new Firefighters teammate Chris Stastny right there beside me!
My days here in Boulder are vanishing quicker than I want and slower than I’d like. Part of me wants to stay here, living this awesome lifestyle forever. I wake up whenever I want, eat a big old breakfast, ride 5 hours a day, eat more when I get home, hang out with Adelaide in the evening, and do whatever the weather permits on the weekend. It’s been very pleasant, though of course equally fatiguing. I’ve racked up quite a few quality days since becoming a Full Timer last month. My volume has increased, as well as the number of interval/high intensity days I can do per week thanks to the extra time and sleep. I don’t know how or why, but today was my highest wattage day for V02 intervals since last summer, and this is coming after 7 weeks “on” in a row. I’m excited to see where I’ll be after the rest and taper for Normandy.
Normandy…it’s happening. I’m on the squad for it. And it’s what’s eating at me day and night. It’s constantly on my mind and it can’t come soon enough. For weeks now I’ve been devoting every pedal stroke of training to that mysterious race, imagining every stage of it on every ride I do, despite not having a clue what it will be like (I imagine similar to the Tour of Namur in Belgium—hard from start to finish over tough terrain). It will mark the true beginning of my race season as the first team event and my first European throw-down of the year. I’m going to miss Adelaide and Boulder, but the chance to do even half of what’s on my race calendar this year is a dream come true, and you don’t pass up dreams no matter how pleasant your current situation is.
(Funny story about Normandy…I’m not on the roster for it and never was. We were emailed a the race calendar for the first part of the season last week and all I saw were the races, assuming that I was doing the races listed. Turns out I needed to scroll over to the right, or actually just look over to the right side of my screen, and I would have seen names written by each race. As of right now, I will not be doing Normandy).
My dad tore his quadricep tendon last year, which is one of the worst things you can tear and requires one of the longest periods of recovery out of any torn ligament (up to multiple years). To get an idea of what my dad is like and how much this has sucked for him, imagine me (training-wise) except ten times more intense, twenty times more motivated to suffer, and about seventeen thousand times more stubborn. Curt Peterson IS the definition of old man strength. So being on crutches for months on end, and then slowly rebuilding the vanished muscle from his leg has been torture for him. Not that he was taking it easy that whole time. He was on the erg (rowing machine) and in the pool swimming a day after tearing it, which outraged his doctor. He would go on to infuriate every physical trainer he had since.
One year later…now he’s in for shoulder surgery, having overworked his upper body while his leg was under repair for the last 12 months. A lifetime of hard sports is terrific for your health, as well as detrimental. He recently told me that he’d been spending two hours a day on the trainer, with ambitions of doing three hours a day in preparation for his ride across America this summer. He can’t ride outside yet because of the shoulder.
The screwed up ligaments in that shoulder have caused him to do all that riding one-handed with his injured arm resting between his hip and leg, with thumb bent backwards. He’s spent so much time with his hand like that while riding that it screwed his thumb up too and he couldn’t even type on his computer for the last week.
Besides Normandy and the upcoming race season, I’ve recently been thinking about my dad while I’m out riding, especially when I’m wheezing through an interval or about to crack my third or fourth or fifth time up Flagstaff. I think about how much my dad would love to be in my place, riding for hours on end in the mountains, not giving a damn about anything except daydreaming about races, sucking in the thin, cold air, suffering like a dog day in and day out, and occasionally taking in the awesome view of the Rockies. I feel that if you live your life through someone else’s eyes, you can accomplish more and push harder than alone.
I’ve been going through some rehab myself lately, though not from surgery. A long time ago, way back in 2009, you may remember that I took a terrible summersault through the air during a crash and landed on my back on the sidewalk curb during the crit at Murrieta. I could barely walk for days. I never went to the hospital, instead just forcing myself to forget about it and the possible broken vertebra over the next couple months while it recovered. That injury never fully went away, and this fall it began acting up worse than normal. I believe this happened because I spent too much time doing back exercises in the gym in an attempt to strengthen it. Typical. Try to fix something and you just end up breaking it even more. Kind of like that time my roommate Matt and I punched and kicked a six-foot-tall, three-foot-wide hole in someone’s living room at a house party in college. Wait no. That’s not similar at all.
Because going to the gym and jus workin’ on my fitness didn’t fix my back, I tried yoga instead. I went three times a week for a month and that didn’t help either. Then I tried forgetting about it again. This actually worked the best, but about two weeks ago, for no apparent reason other than the idea just occurring to me, I decided to seek some medical advice at Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. An X-ray showed that I had not broken anything back in 2009, which was a relief, though really what would they have done? It’s not like you can just magically fix a broken bone!
The injury was muscular (as in it was a ‘ripped’ injury, or ‘shredded’…get it?), so my doctor prescribed dry needling, which I’ve since done three times. A woman named Simone and sometimes another woman named Sue stick needles deep into your muscles, except not like acupuncture–these go deep and directly into the knotted muscle bundles–forcing the tight muscles to release from their knotted states. Sometimes they hook the needles up to a stimulator that shocks you. I like the feeling. I can’t say whether or not dry needling has helped for sure, though my back does seem to be acting up less.
I fly to Tucson tomorrow night for 10 days of riding in the desert. With all the snow we’ve been blessed with this winter, I’ve had plenty of time to look forward to training and racing down there in the sun for some final monster hours in the saddle, as well as the sort of high intensity that isn’t possible at elevation. Adelaide will meet me down there on Friday. Sometime after the 17th I fly to Europe. It’s getting close. I can practically taste the second breakfast pasta as we speak.
The word equality is more striking than “equal pay,” and cuts directly to what we’re really talking about. In pro, as well as amateur cycling, there’s a sort of debate about whether women deserve equal treatment. This is in regards to prize money, salaries, equal number of races, quality of races, etc. The fact that this ‘debate’ exists has become increasingly disturbing to me. It makes me feel a bit shameful, knowing that so many of my friends and colleagues are, deep down, jaded by bigotry.
But I get their point. I see their side of the story very easily, and when I first started cycling I thought–(okay not when I first started. Back then I didn’t think about anything, I just pedaled hard)–so a few years after I’d been in the sport I pondered the question of whether women’s cycling had reached a point where it was on par with men’s for equal pay, equal number of races, the prestige of starting last in an evening crit when the crowds are at their biggest and rowdiest. I decided no, it didn’t. And women’s cycling still isn’t there.
In order to change this, we have to be progressive, not passive. We can’t wait for it to catch up. Farmers don’t expect their crops to grow without fertilizer and water. Maybe that’s a bad metaphor since I’m comparing women to corn, but my point is still there. And besides, everyone likes corn. Women’s cycling, just like men’s, needs nurturing to see growth. At this point, because their field is being overrun by a rampant strain of soybeans from across the road (men’s cycling), this particular crop of corn needs some extra care and attention.
It’s no secret that there are way fewer women that show up at a local race than men. Their races may not be as competitive because of the lack of participants, but do the women want it any less than the men? Don’t they try just as hard? Don’t they train as ferociously and as passionately? They sweat and grit their teeth just as much as any guy and they look better doing it too. So why the hell are we keeping them down!?
Cycling, like most sports, should be a flagship for what society could be like. Sport exemplifies the pinnacle of human endeavor, an arena that allows fierce competition without the downfall of war and consumerism: death, poverty, and destruction of the natural world. Sport should stand as the antithesis to greed and dishonesty within competition and the way our society is actually run, where profits steam-roll the quality of human life…and human life in general if you’re from the third world. Sport should separate itself from the real world and demonstrate what we can accomplish with hard work and ethics.
For this reason, I view dopers as unworthy participants in sport. They were given the opportunity to be part of something great, and instead they squandered that chance with greed. It’s even worse to hear about dopers now in this day and age when PEDs are not at all necessary to take in order to win. I increasingly view male cyclists, those who don’t want the attention and funding of sponsors to be divided evenly amongst the sexes, in a similar light.
White men have dominated the earth for long enough. It’s time to let our stranglehold on everyone else cease.
One thing that I truly admire about America is the equality between men and women in the workplace, at least compared to a lot of other countries. I expect that women have capitalism to thank for this, as corporations, long ago, realized that they could double their profits by making women work. But even here, the land of free enterprise–or as close to it as you can get–the average American full-time working woman still makes 33% less than the average full time working man. Men, would you be willing to do the same amount of work as you do now with a pay cut of $11,600 per year?–and have that money go to another group of people (women) that are doing the same amount of work as you? What. The. Hell. Where’s the outrage!
The gender wage gap is caused by discrimination. And while it’s huge, it doesn’t even bring to light an even larger wage gap–that of the average US man vs woman (working and non-working included). Women account for the larger percentage of stay at home parents, who don’t count as workers because raising children is not real work.
“Well, some women want to stay at home and raise their kids. There’s nothing wrong with that.” I agree, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, more time spent with family should be encouraged for women and men. A 40-hour a week job is too much time spent at the office. We’d all be happier working less and having less things. But shouldn’t stay at home moms be compensated equally for their work? Raising kids is work, right? Or when working moms have a baby shouldn’t they at least get some help? Here in the States, we don’t even have child care or paid maternity leave. The few countries in the world that don’t have any sort of state-guaranteed, paid maternity leave: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia, Lesotho, and the US of A.
Below is a map of the world’s maternity leave. This map is from 2009, and Australia added paid maternity leave in 2011, so it’s no longer in the pink category with us–the only category that offers nothing.
Unfortunately, money is power. When one gender has less money than another, they will never have the same rights. I don’t know, maybe most women don’t care about this but it piss me off even as a man.
Back on the topic, women’s cycling deserves the opportunity to grow, and as members of this sport, we should all strive to show the ‘real’ world what humanity can and should be like: equal regardless of race, gender, or nationality.
A little affirmative action is needed for women’s cycling to catch up, so even if the numbers aren’t there yet, women’s cycling deserves more money and more races, which will bring more women into the sport to fill those races and eventually legitimatize the higher salaries and prize money (most pro women don’t even have a salary these days). This will of course take time, and money in this sport is very sparse, so everything helps. My team has a women’s program, and although it’s a little smaller than the men’s side, it’s a huge step for a first year continental program to have a pro women’s team. Adelaide’s race, the Gebhardt Automotive Cycling Classic, had equal pay for the top three men and women in the pro/1/2 fields. The money went two places deeper to 4th and 5th in the men’s race because the field was so much larger (58 starters compared to 13). Things like this matter and other race promoters should take note of this set up. Most important is a change of mindset. When you’re talking about equal prize money and equality for women with your friends, show some compassion for your fellow human beings and realize that what you say behind closed doors matters. Even small stones make a ripple.
What a relief it’s over and done with. I’m not talking about my race; I’m talking about THE race. Like the whole thing in general. Back in November when Adelaide suddenly decided to put this event on, neither of us quite knew how much work or how stressful it would be. Adelaide did the work, and I stressed. Well, I helped stress. Like the work, Adelaide did just about all of the stressing herself too.
She’s writing a blog post about how in the hell she put on the race (it’s anyone’s guess really), so check it out in my “friends” column to the right in a day or two. I won’t say too much about it other than I’m incredibly proud and amazed that she pulled this off. She didn’t know a thing about bike racing when she started this back in November. She barely anything about bikes for that matter. Two big things that she has going for herself is that she’s a very fast learner and a hard worker. Putting on the race turned into a part-time, then full-time job, and finally culminated into a 15-hour a day job for the last week and a half. I would get tired just watching her work.
The lack of pre-registered racers was a big concern in the final few weeks, as was the weather, the very real possibility of her losing thousands of dollars of her own savings, and of course the potentially dangerous, angry residents who lived along the course that began calling a few weeks ago. One guy argued with Adelaide on the phone for about 15 minutes, proclaiming that he was going to sue her, which of course wouldn’t have been possible because she had all the legal permits she needed to use these PUBLIC roads. Another drunk-sounding redneck left a long voicemail (she’d since begun screening her calls from Laramie County numbers) and said, and I quote, “You people down in Boulder need to keep your bikes down there IN Boulder…we don’t like you comin’ up here….on our roads and riding them races….it’s the silliest thing I ever heard of….so….just STAY down there…in BOULDER and do your races….down there IN Boulder. Okay?” He rambled on and on about how he hates people in Boulder/cyclists for like 5 minutes. The disorganized, jumbled thought-pattern of this troubled individual rivaled some of my longest, most spaced-out voicemails…and I’ve left some pretty spaced-out voicemails in my day.
Anyways, the race was a huge success. 400 people ended up coming out to race and only one resident was given a ticket for reckless driving. It was sunny, the wind wasn’t gusting at 50+ mph like the day before, and the snow held off, just barely, until the evening. It was very humbling and satisfying seeing the level of support all our friends, Adelaide’s family, and other volunteers gave leading up to and during the race. The sponsors, which all provided excellent support, should be happy knowing they invested in something and someone very worthwhile. Everyone I talked to said it was a perfect day on the bike, that it was one of the best-run races they’d done, and it was one of the most fun courses they’d raced on in quite some time. We may have angered a few jaded losers with nothing better to do than pout about us slowing them down for an afternoon on “their” roads, but it was totally worth it after hearing how happy it made 400 other people and their friends and families. And now, onto my race (if you want the Cliff Notes version, I didn’t win but I did end the day with a bunch of free beer and some high quality pizza).
I started out by driving the lead car for the Masters 45+ cat 1, 2, 3 race that morning. I was nervous the entire time about the race in general, whether things were running smoothly at registration, if the traffic cones that the Sheriff’s office made us put along the center lines would cause crashes, and whether or not Adelaide was having a mental break down back at the star/finish.
I didn’t see anyone in the masters field behind me crash and when I got to the finish two laps later, everything seemed to be under control as no fire engines had shown up, yet. I got out of the car and stepped into my kit, eager to get the stressful part of the day over with and onto my bike where I belonged.
With my cortisol levels jacked to an all-time pre-race high, the whistle went off for the start of our race. I sat in, content to ride easy in the pack until the first hill. Our race did four laps of a 17-mile loop, which had a steep switchback climb up to Carter lake, followed the shore line before barreling down a steep descent, and then rolled on undulating, wind-swept terrain for the remainder. It’s a super popular training route that most of us have done 50 times, but it felt different today in the race somehow.
Dirka face. I’m looking forward to our new clothing by they way (that’s an HB vest Circa 2010). D2 Photography.
A large breakaway of 10 or so guys got away early and the field was content to let them go, since every team was represented. I was worried, but smartly waited until the climb to poke my head out into the wind. I rode pretty hard that first time up the climb and took 20 seconds out of the break’s lead, leaving them a 12-second gap. No one would help close it the rest of the way down once the terrain flattened out going around the lake. Luckily Nick Bax of Rio Grande dropped out of the break with a mechanical and we passed him as he struggled to take out his rear wheel a minute later. That meant that Rio had to chase the break down since they now didn’t have anyone up there.
Rio left the chasing a bit too late, and instead of closing it down immediately, they didn’t get up to the front until the gap had gone back up to like 30-40 seconds. But they did keep it from growing any more than that.
I took another dig the second time up the climb with a few others, and at the top were were gnawing at the heels of the break, which was finally just within reach. A few more pulls across the lake, towing the remainder of the field, and we made contact. I attacked immediately.
It didn’t go anywhere. Nick attacked. I bridged to him with one other guy and the three of us went for it over the next couple miles. We didn’t stand a chance with Horizon and all the other teams back there. The wind wasn’t favorable for a small break either. It was pretty much a head or tailwind for most of the lap, with only a little bit of cross wind coming into effect once in a while.
I attacked and covered a lot of moves over the next few miles but missed the next lasting break, which contained, among others Josh Yeaton of Horizon and Jim Peterman of Rio Grande–two guys on my danger list.
I waited until after the start/finish to attack again, this time taking first Chris Winn of Horizon with me, followed shortly by Nick Bax (Rio) and Kit Recca (also Horizon). See picture above. We motored pretty smoothly and easily up to the break, making it 8-guys strong, which was a bit too heavily weighted with Horizon riders now. Josh sat on since they had the numbers to do that, while his teammates Kit and Chris took extra pulls. I never heard a time gap to the field, but never really needed one. There was no way we were getting brought back now.
Half way up the climb I attacked, but sat up quickly when I saw that Peterman was sitting on my wheel. I let him come around and pull the rest of the way to the top. Just in case I had to respond to a counter attack, I wanted to stay out of the wind as much as possible and save my breath. Ever since Wednesday, when I did the first of my 1-minute intervals of the year, I haven’t been able to breath right. I’ve been coughing at night and more easily winded since those brutal efforts, seemingly working with diminished lung capacity. This had me a little worried every time on the climb. I’m recovering from the workout just fine, but it’s a slow process apparently. I might have overdone it a tad bit the last couple weeks with all the hard efforts. Whatever. They’re paying off, and will pay off even more after some big-time quality rest in a few weeks.
At the top of that last climb all that were left was me, Josh, Peterman, Brandon Babaracki of Sonic Boom, and Michael Burleigh of Primal. The four of us all took pretty even turns while Josh sat on, knowing that he could get away with it since he had two teammates, for a little while anyways, chasing right behind.
The attacking started maybe 6 or 7 miles from the finish on the false flat/rolling headwind section. I followed for a while, letting others do the work to bring back each other, then unleashed what I thought was the race-winning acceleration with about 6K to go. I looked back, saw a big gap, and kept my head down. I looked back again, suffering, and saw Josh coming across, with Peterman leading the other two guys right behind. I sat up and they caught me. I attacked again immediately. That didn’t go anywhere. We coasted a bit and I attacked again, which also didn’t go anywhere for long. By now we were on the final false flat downhill straightaway to the finish line, with only 2.5K of tailwind riding to go to the line. There was no way anything was getting away now, so I saved up for the sprint.
I’m not sure how it’s possible to get boxed in when you’re sprinting in a 5-man group, but I managed it. I’d been sitting just to the left of Josh’s rear wheel in fourth position, expecting him to go around Peterman’s and Babaracki’s left side since the wind was slightly from the right. He didn’t, and when he started his sprint early I couldn’t get over to him since Burleigh was right there to my right. The rest of the guys began the sprint, unintentionally forming a three-man-wide Mighty Ducks’ V that I was stuck in the middle of and couldn’t pass. I coasted with 100 meters to go. This is the second time in two weeks I’ve coasted during a sprint. What the hell??? I found a gap with 70 meters to go, took a few big pedal stokes and lunged for the line, taking 2nd ahead of Babaracki and Peterman. I need to get on the track for some sprint practice apparently. Josh would have beaten me on that sprint anyways since it was flat and we were all still pretty fresh from it being a short race at 68 miles, but I should have at least been on his wheel.
Horizon played it smart by never missing out on a move, stacking the breakaways, driving them when needed, and conserving when necessary. I feel like Rio stepped up this year, coming to the race with a full, strong squad and racing aggressively. As for myself, I should have attacked more in the end maybe, though Jim Peterman wasn’t about to give me any leash and he and the rest of the guys were still too fresh and strong for me to get away from. I needed like one or two more laps for that to happen and for their legs to possibly weaken. I was fairly satisfied with 2nd and happy to get in another good day of hard riding—all in order to continue my build up for Normandie, which I hope to hear about soon. There are so many strong guys on our team that I might not make the selection for that race. For now I’m just crossing my fingers and training my ass off. Today is a rest day though. My lungs appreciate it.
Someone’s iphone Photography.
Below is my ex-coworker Dan doing what he does best. Check out his website D2 Photography for some awesome shots.
Some good friends manning the beer tent after the race:
I went down to Texas last weekend to race my bike and to see for myself that everything is indeed bigger in Texas, aside from driver IQ. The sheer amount of America down there is baffling. First of all, there are only three colors visible to a Texan’s cones: red, white, and blue. And by the way, none of those colors run.
Secondly, every car must be a truck, and no smaller than an F-150. It’s preferable to drive a dually F-250/350 though. Everything else really is just for women, small children, and the gays. Okay, now that I’ve had my fun giving Texas a hard time, let me back up a bit and say that I had a great time in the Lone Star state.
By the way, if you want to hear what a Texan sounds like while backing up…
This was a fat joke in case you didn’t realize.
I flew down Friday evening and got picked up by Michael Lalla of Elbowz. He and I met a long time back in 2008 in Tucson during the Shootout when I commented on how awesome his mullet was. It was an instant friendship, as I was currently attempting to grow one for myself.
Michael and I drove out to the race hotel in Mineral Wells, which was like 90 minutes from the airport and is known for their healing water, full of scientifically proven minerals that heal all ailments (it’s science. Actually it’s not). Legend has it that people used to believe that the mineral-rich water from the well in this little town was basically a magic elixir. It’s strange to think, but people back in the olden days stupidly used to believe that things existing in nature could help them. Now we know better and put our faith where it should be, in pharmaceuticals.
But before we got to Mineral Wells, we came upon a dangerous driver on the freeway (in an F-150 of course). We kept a bit of distance as the driver swerved back and forth in the fast lane, either texting or drunk. We waited a few more minutes before realizing that it definitely wasn’t a one or two-time swerve, and that this guy was loaded. Michael decided to call 911 and report the guy. We got up real close so we could read the license plate while Michael was on the phone with the 911 operator.
We hung up after the call was complete and a police officer was on the way (or so we were told). But in order to stay on the trail, we decided that we had to follow this guy. He sped up to 95mph for a while, still swerving everywhere in and out of fairly heavy traffic and barely able to stay in his lane, then he’d slow way down to 50 for no apparent reason. We stayed vigilant, ready, close but not too close. He exited. Shit. Michael called 911 again to let them know the driver was off the freeway now and headed to a gas station. We followed him there, where he parked, got out, and left the car running in the parking space. His girlfriend also got out. Both probably needed to restock their supply of Slim Jims and a Redbull to keep the party going.
Michael had just gotten off the phone with a police officer this time, giving the driver’s current location, when I decided I wanted to stop the guy if he tried getting back in his car. All I needed was a, “Well, maybe,” from Michael but he was more hesitant than that (I’m not blaming him at all by the way.) A lot of people carry guns down there, and this guy definitely seemed the part and drunk enough to not think twice about doing it.
We continued to wait for the cops, then took off a few minutes later, immediately regretting not waiting longer and stopping the guy from getting back in. I don’t know if the cops ever got there in time. He was taking quite a while in the gas station, so it could have been possible. But Michael and I both felt like we made the wrong decision after we’d left. It had been getting late, we still had a ways to drive, and the next day was going to be an early morning with a full day of racing.
On the other hand, starting the weekend off in jail, kicked off our teams, too inured to race, sued, or shot dead wouldn’t be ideal, stopping that drunk idiot still would have been the right thing to do no matter what and we should have done it. I’m still kicking myself about it. One thing that played in my mind to justify not stepping in was the thought that maybe I was over-reacting and too-ready to get in a fight. This occurred to me due to the growing number of times I’ve gotten into it with drivers lately. But this time it was definitely a risk I should have taken.
Later, as we were driving and brooding over what we should have done, we came up with two potentially safe and crafty ways to make sure the guy got caught: 1) since his car was still running we could have snuck into the cab and taken the keys out and tossed them in the bushes 2) we could have blocked him in with Michael’s car, put our hood up, and pretended the car broke down right there behind the guy’s truck. That would have bought at least another 5 minutes for the cops to show up 3) take a brick and smash his skull in once he stepped out of the store. Next time.
Okay, now onto the racing:
The first stage the next morning, Saturday, was a super short (too short) circuit race. The lap was 3 miles long with terrible pavement and two rollers. I spent quite a bit of time off the front in various moves, solo for some, in groups of 3-4 for others. With 2 laps to go I attacked with a couple guys, attacked them once the field was right behind us, got bridged up to, then attacked those guys once the field was behind us again then soloed for a mile or so. Three more guys came up to me and we rolled pretty well for the next 3/4ths of a lap until the field was on us again and we were caught with 2km to go. One guy snuck away from me and kept on going and made it to 200 meters but got swarmed by the field. Since the finish was into a headwind up a small riser, positioning was important. I got boxed in, as did most people, and had to coast twice going up the hill in the last 150 meters. Stupid. I got around a few guys finally and wound up 10th. This was a points-based stage race so placing well in every stage was important. Points went: 1st=25pts, 2nd,=24pts, 3rd=23pts, et-cetera, et-cetera all the way down to 1 point for 25th place.
I felt good in the circuit race. It felt really easy. I was happy about this especially since I wasn’t sure how my legs were going to recover from the previous workouts that week. You see, now that I don’t work I have a lot of time to train hard. I have been putting this time to good use, and rode for 4 to 4.5 hours Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, only taking one day easy on Friday. During those three days on, I performed super secret top secret ultra secret training. Okay this is what I did: 20 minutes of V02 intervals each day, followed by upper zone 2 and lower zone 3 for the remaining hours. I’m taking this training regime out of The Sencenboss’ play book, stacking small to medium blocks of V02 back to back. The third day of it was actually my best day, which is always very encouraging.
So anyways, after a solid two weeks of training with only a couple rest days, I still felt good for Saturday’s circuit race. Would I feel good for the TT that early afternoon? Does a Kennett eat 2,000+ calories during a free Best Western continental breakfast???
The answer is and was yes. I felt good for the TT. It was short at just six minutes, and constantly turning and rolling over small risers. There was a bit of a cross tailwind out, then a bit of a cross headwind back. I hammered over every little bump and went a bit easier on the downs, and pretty much wimped out on the corners since I hadn’t pre-ridden it, not that anyone else had either and not that it was very technical. I need to spend more time in my aerobars, that’s for sure.
I got 2nd, 4 seconds off Kristian House of Rapha Condor and 0.2 seconds ahead of 3rd place Rob Chrisman of 787 Racing. House didn’t have a TT bike, and hearing that was kind of disappointing. But then again, it wasn’t too much of a TT-bike necessary course, or so I’ll tell myself.
Michael and I hung out in the hotel room, which was free thanks to the race promoter, until Mike, Adam, and Collin showed up, all three were racers and friends of Michael who were going to stay with us that night. I slept with Mike and Michael slept with Collin. Adam took an air mattress on the ground, though I had a very vivd dream that I was snuggling with a black bear late that night. This is Adam:
Not unlike a bristly black bear now that I think about it…
For dinner we went to the Mesquite BBQ pit. I asked the waitress what brisket was. She looked at me like I was a genuine dummy. I ordered brisket, which had been slow cooked for over 24 hours, with a side of french fries and mashed potatoes. Pillowy mounds.
The food was amazing and plentiful. I also ate at least half of Michael’s fired ocher. I thoroughly enjoyed all these new kinds of authentic ethnic food that I’d never had before. We went back home to the hotel room and watched the Olympics, which have been great this year. Speed skating and cross country in specific.
The next morning was way too early. It happened at 5:45. I’d smashed a waffle with peanut butter and honey, eggs, sausages, three cups of coffee, and one more cup of coffee within 20 minutes and we were in the car driving to the course 15 minutes later.
The race started at a ridiculous 7:35. Just barely light out. Cold. Groggy. Everyone was sleeping on the saddle. I went with the first attack right when the neutral section was up.
One guy had drifted off the front. Michael followed. Another guy sprinted up to them and I jumped on his wheel. The four of us began rotating through and pretty quickly seven more joined us. The rotation was a bit slow, but at the front we were doing over 400 watts so I figured the chase behind would have to really ramp up to catch us before we had a solid and insurmountable gap. I was correct, somewhat, and within a few miles our gap was already 30 seconds and soon over a minute.
We slowed down to my dismay. Somehow we lost a guy despite the tempo pace we were going. I knew if we could just smash it for 20 miles our gap would be well over five minutes and the race would be over for the guys behind us, but there were too many soft-pedaling pussies in the break.
A little bit about the course: it was 24 miles long and we were to do three laps. It was flat except for a small hill that was 2 minutes long. The rest was false flat and windy, especially the last six or seven miles of the course coming into the finish. There were hot spot sprints at the finish line for the first two laps, plus a hot spot KOM, also for GC points, the second time up the climb. I was sitting 4th on GC, 1 point behind 3rd and 2nd place, who were tied, and 8 points behind House, who was 1st. Looking around, I realized that none of those guys were in the group with me. All I had to do was get a few points during the KOM or hot spot sprints, which wasn’t even necessary actually, and make sure the group stayed away, and then I’d win the overall, which was my main goal since the payout was pretty good. $500 for first, $400 for 2nd, and $300 for 3rd. It paid all the way to 10th place, and for a regional race like this that’s pretty darn good in my book. If you win the GC at an NRC it’s only 2 grand so 500 bucks here is great and would easily cover all my expenses and I’d be able to come away with a good profit. Now that my paycheck is considerably smaller than when I was working at SmartEtailing, these things matter.
I took extra pulls but our gap was hovering dangerously low at the half way point at just over a minute. It had been hovering between 50 seconds and 2 minutes for a while. I wanted to just smash it on the front but knew that I’d just drop the weaker guys and make everyone else tired and pissed off, then I’d be out all alone or with only one or two people on a course that demanded a big break from the wind. There was nothing I could really do except take extra pulls and try to keep the group’s motivation up with help from a couple of the other stronger riders.
I got badly beaten for the first hot spot sprint since I went way too early, thinking a red banner was the finish line, only to realize that it was the 500m to-go sign.
Someone crashed in the feed zone right after the sprint. His teammate, who had been sitting on like the guy who crashed, refused to pull anymore at all. We verbally abused him until he did. Sorry buddy, but if you’re going to sprint for the hot spot points and win them, you have to pull. It’s so stupid when someone thinks they have the right to sit on, do zero work, and still go for sprints or try to win at the end. Just dishonest in my opinion and I’d hate to win like that. I wouldn’t even consider it a win. It’s like cheating.
Back in the field House and the other strong guys were keeping our gap in check. I got beaten on the KOM, which was surprising to me, and only took 2nd. My kick is still lagging quite a bit, though it’s certainly made some leaps and bounds in the last couple weeks. I’m confident it will be back up to full strength in another month.
We were almost caught at the second hot spot sprint at the end of the second lap, with our gap dipping down to 40 seconds, but we held the chase off once again. I took 3rd in the hot spot sprint, so one point there and three for the KOM meant I was in an okay position to win the overall, assuming at least a couple of us stayed away to the finish on that last lap. This was not to be.
We dropped more guys and by the time we got to the climb on the last lap a chase with all the strongest guys was just 15 seconds behind us. I went hard up the climb but was caught at the top. Our groups merged and reshuffled up the climb, with Michael getting a flat and most of the original break getting dropped. Now, with half a lap to go it was a new group of 9 that would contest the win. House was there, as were the other top GC guys, including Jason Waddell of Tulsa Wheelmen, Mat Stephens of Bone Shaker, Michael Mull of Team US, and Derek Wilkerson of Elbowz. So there went my chance of winning the overall, now that House was in the group. I knew that no matter what he’d be able to get at least 3rd in the sprint, probably better, which would give him enough points to take the overall win even if I took the stage. So now my goal was to hang onto 2nd GC and forget about going for the stage win. I wanted the GC placing, ie the money, which made me race more conservatively than I normally would have, which inevitably lost me the stage and 2nd on GC.
We worked together for the most part over the next five miles, then the attacks began. I only followed. I didn’t think anything would get away since the best sprinter, Waddell, had a strong teammate, Gibson Winfield, to pull it all back together. All I needed was 4th anyways. Stephens slipped off the front during that attacks and we all looked at each other for too long and he was gone with 2K to go. Then I completely botched the sprint by sitting 2nd wheel in the headwind behind a laboring Gibson, who was pulling his brains out for his teammate, and I got passed by just about everyone with 200+ meters to go. The acceleration from behind me was so strong and sudden that they were already going practically twice my speed when they came around. I stood no chance, even if I’d been able to whip out 1300 watts for 10 seconds, which I cannot do. My tactics were just terrible. I wound up 7th on the stage and a miserable 3rd overall, just one point off of 2nd, which was why I consider it to be so miserable. God I raced that last couple of miles so stupid. So, so stupid. I can hardly believe it. Earlier in the race I was confident that I’d win the stage and the overall, but ended up not doing either. At least it wasn’t due to my legs. With every race you grow a little wiser and hopefully a little stronger. Or maybe a little more brain damaged and a little more fatigued. One of the two.
To the promoters of the Iris Stagner Memorial Stage Race: well done! It was a great race, fun courses, great payout, and all around a terrific event. Thank you.
But wait I’m not done. The trip didn’t end there. It should have. That should have been the end of this blog post but there’s a big old rant coming up instead:
Frontier Airlines royally fucked me over. So fucking hard. God damnit I’m still angry about it. Here’s what happened. I booked my return flight to Denver for March instead of February. I learned this when I called them up, wondering why I couldn’t check into my flight online (in order to so save $5 for pre-paying my bikes). This was the second time I’ve chosen the wrong month to fly home. The way Frontier has their shitty website set up actually makes it easier for you to choose the wrong month. Don’t believe me? Well you haven’t flown Frontier that many times have you? The cost to fix this mistake? $265. The cost of my original two-way ticket? $188. There went breaking even for the weekend.
I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with two Frontier agents, venting my furry at them and telling them how the company they’re employed by is a greedy, money-pinching, immoral corporation that doesn’t care about anything except a profit and that anyone and everyone that stands in the way of this will get screwed over. I expect they already knew this though.
After I’d regretfully paid for the new bullshit ticket, Michael and his fiance Jesse took me to a bar in what I want to call “Uptown” Dallas, though I have no clue what it was called. Uptown suites it though. It was a combination Harley Davidson/hipster street, lined with cool, weird looking bars and restaurants. It was sunny and warm out, only like 4:30 or so. There, we met Philip, who’s a mutual friend of ours, and Michael’s boss. I was drunk after half a beer. My anger was virtually gone thanks to this magic potion. My blood pressure went down to a healthy 180 over 140. I ate a hamburger. Total calm.
Luckily Michael was paying attention to the time and we got to the airport at 6PM, still warm and sunny out in Dallas, headed home once again to the cold most likely. My state of euphoria was holding strong (the buzz was still there in other words). At security TSA took my forgotten honey bear for sandwiches out of my backpack. “Explosive device.” “Drugs.” “Immoral child porn.” One of those things most likely. An almost full bear of honey straight to the trash. I held my calm. My left eye twitched a little, but I’d previously decided to be extra courteous to people for the rest of the day in order to say screw you to the gods who were trying to make my life hard by messing up my ticket and making me pay almost $300 for a new one.
In the airport I let other people go ahead of me in lines, I made way for people with their heads buried in their iphones as we walked towards each other in the terminal, as opposed to what I normally do, which is walk straight at them until they move or slam into me. I even smiled. SMILED. Smiled at the airport. I was being super nice.
Then I went to the bathroom and the god damn, stupid fucking piece of shit god damn automatic sink faucet wouldn’t stay on for more than a half second at a time. I snapped. The transformation was instantaneous. I growled and cursed and spat and from then on I took my anger out on everyone within a Kennett square foot radius. I purposefully farted non stop on the plane. I battled with the fat guy next to me who actually needed the arm rest because he couldn’t fit his arm beside him. I made sure he couldn’t sleep by bumping his arm constantly and nudging his arm off of it. I put my seat back immediately, even before take off so the person behind me had less room. I glared at the flight attendants for no apparent reason. I farted more. After the flight, back in the Denver terminal, I walked straight into people who wouldn’t get out of my way. I was dragging two huge bike boxes first off all so THEY should have been the ones to move out of MY way. After a long bus ride to Boulder, a half hour wait in at a cold, windy bus stop, then another bus ride up to north Boulder, I was finally home. Adelaide met me there at that final stop to help me drag my bike boxes the last 1/8th of a mile home just before midnight. My raging was over, all my anger had been ‘gifted’ to roughly three dozen other human beings that had the displeasure of encountering me. That’s the only way to get rid of anger, to leave it behind for others to deal with.
Which leads me to wonder, how does anger and hate in the world continue to grow? Shouldn’t there have been a set amount of it at the beginning of time, only allowing it to just get passed around from person to person? Kind of like how much water is on earth. The mass stays the same but transfers from point to point, atmosphere, to ocean, to glacier, to lake, to tears, back to atmosphere, etc.
But no, this is not how hate and misery and anger exist. Hate grows. I believe it grows with every new person brought into the world, not because people are inherently evil, but because with every new person, the earth becomes a little more crowded, a little more inconvenient, a little more stuffy…sort of like being in a tight-packed plane. All that crowding is converted, bit by bit, into hate and anger and evil. That’s how it grows. Eventually it will run out. As with everything, it requires energy to multiply or gain momentum, and the universe’s entropy will at some point in time max out and everything will be still. I think.
But wait there’s more. Gotta get that word count up to 4,000. Before I’m done I want to point out that anger isn’t always a bad thing. Going about your life without feeling any anger towards anything is a sign of weakness, naivety, gullibility, ignorance, and denial. It’s a boring person who feels this sort of contentedness with the status quo. I’ve always thought that reaching a state of peace is for the frail at heart, a person with nothing left to prove or accomplish, a person without wonder or deep thought, someone who’s ready for their grave. Is real happiness even possible without anger? No.
A little bit, or a lot, of anger is necessary to reach goals, overthrow true evil, and to fight for what’s right (your right to party..duh). If you think the world is a good place, you’re not paying attention. We live lavishly only because we take and take and take and make billions of others suffer. “The poor have more now than the rich had back in the Dark Ages,” you say. Yes I agree, but for better or worse, humans base their own happiness on what others surrounding them have. They give value to their lives based on what they contribute to their community and the world, not on the basis that they have enough food to live on or a roof over their heads, though, of course, a lot of people don’t even have those two things.
I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut right now, or I was on the plane the other day, and I came upon this passage of dialogue between two characters that helped me cope with my own anger just a bit and to remind me that anger can be used for good, not just farting on the people to my left and right in order to bring them down to my level:
(I emboldened the part that has to do with anger. The second half is just plain hilarious).
“Doesn’t he believe in psychiatry?”
“Yes, indeed. He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?”
“Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s go to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there. That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty.”
“So the story has a happy ending after all,” said Halyard.
“Hardly. He refused.”
“Lordy!”
“Yes. He was notified that, unless he reported for public-relations duty by yesterday, his subsistence, his housing permit, his health and security package, everything, would be revoked. So today, when you came along, I was wandering around town, wondering what on earth a girl could do these days to make a few dollars. There aren’t many things.”
“This husband of yours, he’d rather have his wife a. –Rather, have her–“Halyard cleared his throat “–than go into public-relations?”
“I’m proud to say,” said the girl, “that he’s one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left.”
(They’re talking about prostitution in case you didn’t pick up on it)
KENNETT PETERSON 