Author: kennettron

I smashed my legs real good this past weekend. I’ve put in a great block of training over the past two weeks and the weather has been perfect for it too. A lot of intensity and a lot of hours, which will either pay off in some good form or a sinus infection. I’ve been drinking kiefer though, which has been proven to boost the immune system, verified by many independent tests paid for by the dairy industry.

I capped off last week with a race yesterday, the Mead Roubaix up north of Boulder. I was facebook chatting a friend on Friday night when he informed me there was a race on Sunday. A road race no less, not a crit! So I did what any rational person would do and signed up for it immediately without thinking about any prior engagements I might have had. A few hours later I remembered that I work on Sundays, so I spent the next day pounding my head against a wall for throwing $45 away on a race that I wasn’t even going to get to do. To punish myself I did a hard day of intervals on Saturday, which Sam had planned for me. Sunday would be a group ride if I could find one or just a long ride with a lot of climbing. Still good trainings, but I was mad at myself for wasting money on the race.

But, long story short, the restaurant let me take the night off so I could race. I love them people! I woke up on Sunday and realized that Saturday’s ride had left me requiring quite a bit of caffeine to get through the race that day, so I made a quadruple pot of coffee. The race was half dirt and half pavement, falling in line perfectly with all the other fake cobblestone wanna-be races this time of year. The race website excitedly proclaimed that there would be “no sand traps this year!” Sand and gravel do not equal cobblestones! Whatever, they’re still cool though and I figured I’d flat no matter what I did so I decided not to invest too much emotional energy in the race since I’d likely flat out right before the finish line.

My rear tire has gotten pretty thin, so I changed it after I had breakfast. I’d pulled a newish tire out of someone’s garbage can a few months ago. It was a Continental grand prix 4000, lightly worn. I put it on my rear wheel and started patching a couple spare tubes to take with me. There would be no wheel support whatsoever at the race. Just a sag wagon, so I planned to come prepared for flats with three brand new multi-patched patched tubes. It was the first time I’ve raced with a saddle bag and a frame pump.

Within five minutes of putting the new tire on, I saw that it had gone flat. Shit. I took the tire off and inspected it, finding a huge gash in the side wall. I assumed there must have also been some invisible wire or piece of glass that had jabbed the tube too, so I threw it away and put my old tire back on. It was getting close to my designated time of departure, so I hastened my work. As I patched my third spare tube, the rear tire suddenly started hissing and let out all the air I’d just put in. So now there was an invisible piece of glass or metal in my old tire?–That for some reason hadn’t flatted the day before, but now decided to while the bike was just sitting there immobile in the garage? Okay then. With the clock ticking, it was time to get desperate. I still had to get my kit on, grab food for the race, chug the rest of my coffee, then ride 25 miles to the race. So I stole the tire and tube off of my roommate’s rear wheel and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t get a third flat in the garage because I was running out of tubes and time.

The wind was in my favor and with a bit of hard riding I got to the race with 20 minutes to spare. There was a small turnout with only 30 something guys in the 1-2 field. But what few guys were there were strong, so I figured it would be somewhat of a hard race, especially with all the dirt and gravel. The course had two gravel sections per lap and five laps total. As we rolled off the start line I finished eating a bar and sat at the back. No reason to move up for a while. That decision proved wrong, as we came upon the first gravel section sooner than I’d anticipated. Mayhem erupted as we hit the extremely loose gravel. Guys swerved off to the side of the road, never to be seen again. The tiny peloton bust apart, with me near the back closing large gaps until I finally got to the front bunch before the road turned back to pavement. The hard packed dirt roads I’d heard about were more akin to riding atop sand dunes.

The group was down to less than 20 riders five miles into the race. Two guys had gotten up the road in the first couple miles and still held an advantage of 30 seconds. We soon hit the second, longer and harder, gravel section. This time only seven of us made it out together and quickly caught the two up the road to make the ‘peloton’ a group of nine. Here’s the run-down on the rest of the race:

Lap 2: Our group of nine remained together despite some attacking and poor cooperation. One Competitive Cyclist, one Optum, three Juwi Solars, one Cal Giant, two Primal Racing, one Tokyo Joe’s, me.
Lap 3: I was at the front and crashed on the second gravel section, taking out the guy behind me, completely my own fault. My front wheel just washed out in one of the many deep sand sections. Someone ran over my arm, which hurt a little. I made it out fine with a sore elbow/arm and some minor road rash. Both me and the guy I’d crashed made it back to the main group eventually. My derailleur hanger was seriously messed up though and I had trouble shifting for the rest of the race.
Lap 4: I attacked on the first gravel section, which helped get our group back down to around nine guys. I’d aided a small group of chasers get into the lead group when I’d crashed. Someone counter attacked right after I did and I hurt really badly for the next five minutes.
Lap 5: I began getting tiring and tried to do less than my fair share of work to bring back two guys that had gotten up the road at the end of lap 4. We caught them on the second gravel section and with five miles to go there were just six or seven of us left. I flatted. I cursed the race and the lack of wheel support. I changed my flat tire and rode in for 10th place.

I’ve never raced on such sketchy, loose gravel roads and I’ve never spent so much time Tokyo drifting. I imagine a large part of the reason that the Tokyo Joe’s guy won was because he’s used to that sort of maneuvering. The race, while touted by some as being too dangerous, in my opinion was fine as long as you didn’t mind risking a crash (it’s gravel after all so it’s a soft landing). Riding in that terrain was pretty technical and there was no way you could sit in if you didn’t have the legs or the balls. In fact I think it really helped my bike handling skillz. What I didn’t think was right was the lack of a wheel car. Seriously? A race that’s half gravel and you don’t have a single support car? Come on that’s just stupid and extremely lazy.

My roommate, Kim, came by to watch the second half of the race and check out the beer garden, which I think was probably a better time than racing. It was a beautiful sunny, hot day and the start/finish was right in the middle of the town park. Perfect conditions to watch a bike race, drink a beer, and eat a hot dog. I almost got a hot dog after the race but my stomach was a bit queazy, and we had plans to stop by the frozen yogurt place on the way home. So instead of riding back and making the day’s total distance 120 miles (probably too long), I got my road rash cleaned up, drove the car home, and ate frozen yogurt. Not a bad day at all despite losing another race due to a flat tire. And as an added bonus, since Kim crashed on her face the other day our house is well stocked with Tegaderm.

First off, I’d like to acknowledge the hard work my computer has done and the outstanding performance it’s had over the last five years. Yeah that’s right, this here laptop has been plugging away since before I even started this blog. The keyboard is so nasty now that it requires a bi-monthly cleaning by a colony of ants that lives in the walls of my room. They come in at night and exit in the morning when I turn the computer on, seeping out of the keyboard like black sand, if sand could walk. Okay I guess not like sand at all, more like small insects that resemble sand. Like ants. Anyways, they need to come back soon because there’s jam all over the letter C and buggers covering the space bar. I don’t even want to say what’s covering the number 7 and letters M, U and C.

While inanimate objects like my computer wear out over time, life will always find a way. Shit, I’ve been watching too many movies, sorry for the Jurassic Park reference. What I mean to say is that I’m always amazed at the willingness of the human body to respond and adapt to hard work and continue to repair and make itself better. If you bash your head against a wall long enough, you’ll get a callous. And brain damage, but that’s beside the point.

After a bitter cold winter of suffering through hard rides, the constant uncertainty of whether I’ll make enough money to survive out here or if I’ll have to retreat home, a terrible start to the season with sickness and bad luck, I’ve come back to Boulder even stronger than I was a few weeks ago. On Tuesday I hit some VO2 intervals with power numbers that were on the verge of being what I can do at sea level, which is pretty damn good for me. Coming after all the travel I’ve done recently and all the stress I’ve put myself through with my own lofty standards, it’s hard for me to understand how this is possible. How can our cells keep on going like this? Replenishing themselves and growing stronger all the time? Don’t they get tired? Don’t they question when this madness will end? Of course we eventually start breaking down over the years, but even when we’re 70 our cell growth continues. It’s mind baffling to me. Nothing else repairs itself like this. Glaciers melt, mountains crumble, and stars eventually go dim. A cyclist’s legs grow more veiny. (Note: I do realize that glaciers, mountains, and stars all grow at some point, but if you take a hammer to a rock it will never glue itself back together by itself).

Yesterday I rode for five hours, exploring a section of road that I’d never been on. I rode up to Estes Park, an amazing town up in the mountains that’s populated by pine trees, ravens, and Subways and surrounded by gray cliffs, white peaks, and quiet, switch-back roads. Sometimes in order to enjoy the wilderness you’ve got to build a parking lot. It began lightly snowing after I refilled my bottles and began the climb out of town, which itself sits at 7,500 ft. I got up to around 9,000 ft before the road headed back down to earth and I zipped my jacket up for a cool one-hour-long descent. The sweat in my gloves and arm warmers that had been locked in from my jacket became ice cold, but my core stayed warm from riding hard. I passed a meadow where I’d seen three gigantic moose a few months ago. I passed a semi truck, my speed rising to 51 mph, not quite fast enough to blog about, but whatever. I passed a line of cars. The cars passed me back when the road leveled out. It’s one of those awkward descents that requires pedaling. It’s not quite steep enough to coast and definitely not mellow enough to pick a nice big gear to ease mash. It was one of those descents that you ride in your 11 and spin at an annoying 110-120 rpm, tuck and coast for a few seconds, then start spinning again, and I hate spinning that fast. My legs began feeling the effort from the previous three and a half hours of riding, and I was looking forward to getting to a flat road again.

When I got home I had roughly 15 minutes to eat, shower, put on clothes, eat, stare into the fridge for a few minutes wishing I had more food to eat, and get to work without being more than five minutes late. I took 25 minutes. The next six hours were spent standing up, speed walking to and fro in the restaurant, taking orders, bringing food, seating people, cleaning the tables, de-icing people’s water glasses that I’d just brought them–for some reason they can’t just drink water with ice in it (joke’s on them, I just take their water back to the kitchen area and let the ice melt for 10 minutes, then bring them the same glass of water). When it was obvious that I was tired Abesha, the other waiter, told me to take it easy and slow down. I told her that wasn’t possible. If I’m gonna be here, I’m gonna do it fast and hard.

I began fading at around 8 o’clock. It wasn’t busy enough to keep me energized and it wasn’t slow enough for me to sit down at the bar and rest. It was sort of like that long descent on the mountain earlier on my ride. By 10 o’clock my eyes were fuzzy and stinging red, then the last customers finally left. After cleaning up and shutting the place down I got out of there at 10:30 and rode home with $32 in tips in my pocket. That should be enough to feed me for…1 day. I came home, tired but not exhausted–because only weak people get exhausted–and I stayed up way too late watching Benjamin Button on TV while I ate bits and pieces of my roommates’ food. A little ham and cheese here, a little cereal there, nothing to be missed. Only problem is that my roommates are gone for days at a time or don’t eat some of each item of their food every day like I do, so what seems like unnoticeable amounts to me becomes an entire bag to them. I kept telling myself I should just go to sleep, but my hunger and laziness to go downstairs and pump up my air mattress kept me awake. It’s hard for me to go right to sleep after a long day like that. I don’t know why. It could be that despite my mind being mush, it’s still ticking loudly. Or maybe it’s from all the coffee.

Right now I’m harnessing the energy to go ride my bike for an hour or two and get the junk out of my legs for the next two-day block. I’m thinking positive thoughts for my nervous system, glycogen stores, adrenal glands, and muscle fibers, thinking about how they’re repairing themselves and super compensating with just that tiny extra 0.001%. It adds up over time. Next up is Joe Martin and Tour of the Gila, both of which I leave for on Tuesday. The hard part is over, now all I’ve gotta do is ride the last 50 meters in first position.

Thoughts before racing:

This is gonna be hard
That one hill is STEAP!
The gravel is gonna be sick
The whole race is gonna be sick
I get to eat a lot of food today
I probably won’t crash or get any flats
I’m probably gonna win

Thoughts during Battenkill:
…….
…….!
……!!
…….

Thoughts immediately after the race:

Kennett tired
Kennett REALLY thirsty
Kennett hate this race and I doesn’t care if two spectators walking by at the finish hear just how pissed off he is

Race stats:

Distance: 124 miles (two laps of a 62 miles course)
Gravel sectors: 14 (7 per lap) –note, they’re called sectors not sections.  Big difference.
Elevation gain: just under 9,000 ft
Calories I brought with me: 3,200 (though I only ate a measly 2,700)

I decided I hated the race right about the time I got my second flat, which was on the most crucial part of the course on the first lap.  I’d been riding 5-10 guys back at the front on the Becker Road gravel sector, the first of three gravel sectors in a row that make up a nine-mile stretch of dust, pain, and are home to many race-ending chunks of gravel larger than limes.  And much sharper too.  One almost broke Ian’s arm in half.  If one had hit Steve he likely would have suffered a broken torso.  If one had hit David he probably would have assumed it was a gnat.  If one had hit me it actually wouldn’t have hit me but would have instead hit my bike and broken it and Allan would have been PISSED.

I’d been feeling superb the last couple days since we got to New York, riding with that wonderful sensation in my legs that makes you question whether your power meter is reading way too high or something.  The race got underway at noon, Sunday, under sunny skies and 70-degree, muggy air.  We’d ridden parts of the course the two days before, though almost half of what we’d ridden had been sections of the cat 1/2 race, which I’d mapped for the turn-by-turn using Ride With GPS.  For some reason the website liked to call the cat 1/2 race the pro race as well, which made the route-finding extremely difficult, considering there were like 32 different maps on the website and half of them had “pro route” in their title.  Anyways, we knew that there were two main sections of the two-lap course that we NEEDED to be at the front for.  25 miles into the race there was a super steep stair step climb, in total about a five or eight minute effort, which was immediately followed by a fast descent and then a fast, false flat downhill gravel section.  The other place that was crucial to have good positioning was at the start of the 9-mile gravel sector (three separate sectors separated by two short stints of pavement).  The lead up to this gravel sector was hard in itself, located right outside of a “large” town that involved some turns and a few short steep hills.  Both of these crucial sections of the race had feed zones right before them, which made feeding extremely difficult and risky.

I got my first flat roughly 15 miles into the race right after the third gravel section.  Ironically I didn’t flat in the gravel sector itself, but right after it on a corner that had like five pieces of gravel on the pavement.  I thought that it was a bad place to have a mechanical, since the pack had broken up over the last couple miles and was strung out in the crosswind with gaps.  I kept riding hard for a minute in the strung out line I was in, in order to make it to the top of a little riser so that I’d be able to get some quick speed for drafting the caravan back to the pack once I got the wheel change.

The Mavic neutral support got to me fast and had me rolling again in no time.  Five minutes later, with the hardest effort of the race in my legs so far, I was safely in the group, which was now bunched up into some headwind.  Crisis averted.

Leading into the Jim Bean climb (that really steep one I was talking about earlier), the pace went way up as the sprint for the base of the hill ensued.  I found Gabe’s wheel somewhere near the front and he went up the left side with me right behind, making it to the very front just in time to start the climb.  I knew how important it would be to not directly follow any hard accelerations, since there were so many kickers at the top, plus a possible strong crosswind up at the top there as well.  I did most of the climb riding in the top 5 or10 wheels, then slowly let a few guys pass me once we got to those rollers at the very top so I didn’t have to jump quite as hard during Mancebo and the other fast climbers’ attacks.  David and Gabe were right up there with me as we crested the top and barreled down the backside, heading into the fourth gravel sector of the first lap.

Once we hit the gravel, hands were going up all over the place, signaling flat tires.  I prayed my rubber was strong and wouldn’t break.  It held, for the time being.  The peloton had been shredded like cheese behind me at this point, from the climb, the gravel, and all the flats on the gravel, but it came back together pretty quickly once we hit the next flat headwind section.  It was the perfect time to attack, but Steve beat me to it.

He went with Competitive Cyclist rider Max Jenkins and they immediately stretched their lead to two minutes as the peloton scratched its groin and looked around for someone to do the work.  They stayed off for a good chunk of that lap but were reeled in on the 9-mile gravel sector.  A few miles after Steve had gotten away, Optum and Kenda took charge of things as we came into the town of Greenwhich.  Being the designated Map and Route Finders for the past two reconnaissance rides our team did on Friday and Saturday, Steve and I had thoroughly warned everyone to be at the front after we went through Greenwhich, 40 miles into the race and a few miles before the fan got shitty.

I worked my way up, using some energy on the hills outside of town to guarantee myself a spot at the front.  I found David just before the last couple turns and we both began the 9-mile gravel sector right at the front.

Moments into gravel I realized that I was hurting.  The road seemed flat and the gravel wasn’t even that thick here either.  Why was this hurting so much?  I finally came to terms that it was, indeed, uphill, which made me feel better about the suffering I was doing, which in turn made it feel like I wasn’t suffering that bad after all.  The gradual climb turned to a descent and we took a breather.  I think I saw Jesse barrel past in the thickest part of the gravel without blinking an eye.

A mile or two later, once things were flat again and we were almost out of the first of these three gravel sectors, I was still right up at the front and feeling good.  This didn’t last for long, for I suddenly realized my rear wheel was bouncing.  I panicked.  This was not the time for a flat.  I looked back and there was carnage.  The lead bubble at that point was only like 25 guys, followed by a strung out line of riders that stretched back into the ever-increasing dust storm.  I kept riding hard in the group until my tire was completely void of air.  I kept looking back hoping to see the yellow Mavic car or one of the motorcycles coming up behind us so I could get a super fast wheel change.  This was not to be, and I ended up dismounting when I couldn’t keep a straight line any more and waited for quite a while on the side of the road.  By the time the wheel car got to me and had the new wheel on, I was minutes down on any sizeable group.  Joe found me and began pacing me back up through the caravan and the chaos of the other dropped riders.  The dust thickened to the point of me not being able to see more than a few cars lengths up the road.  I weaved in and out of cars and other riders, all while hoping to avoid the largest of the rocks in the road.  A small hill presented a cyclocross situation during an especially thick sand pit and I had to dismount and run up the hill 15 meters before I got back on again.  I continued to pass a lot of people and slowly made my way through the caravan.  If I could make it all the way through this and the final gravel sector in the caravan I had a chance at pacing back on when it became pavement again and the pace at the front let up (not sure if it did).  But I had to do it before the peloton got to the last gravel sector of the lap, which had a big hill in it.  If I wasn’t at least within a cyclist’s stone throw of them at that point, it was game over.

I took a long power feed from Joe and a final draft on his bumper and passed him on a descent (still in the gravel).  I barreled down the hill, my thin road tires buried in the loose stones, Tokyo drifting but not caring.  I was going to get back in the race, God damn it.

I heard a hissing sound.  I was not making it back in the race.  My rear tire was flat again, the third and final flat of the day.  I was furious now and screamed fuck multiple times as loud as I possibly could as I came to a stop.  The riders whom I’d just passed a few minutes ago went by me.  I’d only been riding for 10 minutes and my wheel was already flat again.  This was due, in part, to bad luck, but also to the neutral support’s failure to put more than 60 PSI in the tires they’d given me.

Joe screeched to a halt at the bottom of the hill behind me when he saw me get off the bike.  He jumped out of the car (jumped is a loose term) and replaced my rear wheel.  I got back on and hammered.  Joe passed and I was on my own, off and on for the next 15 miles as I burned passed lone riders and groups of weaklings.  I’d pull with them for a few minutes, see that they’d already given up, and I’d leave them behind for the next group up the road.  I couldn’t believe people were willing to call it quits already.  I smashed up the final gravel sector climb and caught my teammate Gabe near the top.  He and I took turns until the start/finish line, going by other deflated groups on the road like they were standing still.  It was all for nothing.  A race official blew a whistle at the finish line and motioned to us to stop and that our race was over.  The peloton, I learned later, had only been 3-4 minutes up the road (uncatchable but still no reason to cut us).  Honest Gabe stopped, but I continued on in defiance, out of anger, out of hope that I’d be able to somehow catch back on, but also due to the sheer fact that I’d eaten a monumental amount of food the night before and the morning of the race and there was no way I was racing less than five hours today.

So I did the last 62 miles of the race completely alone, going close to as hard as I thought I could hold for the next three hours.  I felt like I could also use the intensity that a high altitude athlete can only get from riding at sea level.  It was a lonely and futile pursuit and I really couldn’t be considered a part of the race at that point, but I wanted to get my money’s worth of hurt.  I felt sooooo strong!  Too bad I was 20 minutes down.

I’d only had three bottles and by now I was 90 miles into the race.  I became increasingly thirsty.  I scanned the ground for bottles and feed bags, the sides of houses for hoses and water spickets, I even thought about stopping at a creek.  I eventually broke down and stopped on the side of the road to pick up a bottle that had been tossed in the grass.  It was less than half full and contained as stranger’s spit, and it was delicious.  It saved me.

I crossed the finish line just under 5.5 hours, pretty well spent, but not in the race intense way that I’d hoped for, like the three finishers on our team (Steve, Ian and David).  David and Ian were our top finishers at 20^th and 22^nd.

Conclusions about the race after I had a day to think about it:

The race is awesome.  I just had terrible luck, like a lot of people.  Sometimes you make your own luck with flats and crashes, though this was not one of those cases so I have nothing to take away in terms of lessons learned from this weekend.  Basically all I can say is that shit happens and at least I had good legs.  There’s always next year.  It’s just a shame that we don’t have more races like this in the States.  We have a thousand crits but only one classic.

More pictures to come. Maybe.

Last weekend I went to Quinn and Allie’s wedding in Portland.  Being the first wedding I’d been to since I was six, and the first formal event I’d partaken in since prom, I had no suit to wear.  This problem was resolved on the way home from the airport, as my dad had a particularly good Salvation Army in mind that was on our route.  The suit I chose was maroon, tight, and smelled extremely old.  It still does, even after I put it through the washing machine.  It actually made all my other clothes in the wash smell bad and old too.

The wedding was a lot of fun, and it was especially nice for me since I hadn’t seen a lot of them peoples in half a year.  I danced hard, ate a lot of good food, and even got some great training advice from Mel, Jacob’s mom.  But back on track, the food being served was buffet style: a make your own salad with lettuce, cranberries, walnuts, raspberry sauce, crumbled feta blue cheese, and red olives.  Then there were fried potatoes, bread, a spiral pasta dish with some sort of cheese sauce and SALMON.  There was SO much salmon in that pasta dish it could, in fact, be called a salmon dish.  Half salmon half pasta.  It was amazing.  Then there was steak with two kinds of sauce to dip/pour on: a wine cheese one and a brown one that was sweater.  I ate so much food that I was still eating during all the toasts and speeches.  I was still eating when Allie fed Quinn cake.  I was still eating when they had their first dance.  I ate so much food that I only had room for one small piece of wedding cake.  I was extremely angry at myself for this.  But in some strange butterfly effect, the universe granted me another piece of cake a few days ago at the Ethiopian restaurant.  A group of people had brought their own chocolate cake to the restaurant to celebrate someone’s birthday.  When they were done with everything and I was getting them the check, I somewhat jokingly asked if they needed any help with the rest of that cake.  They laughed and said, “sure, you want a piece?”  I’m not sure they were being serious, but my smile faded instantly and my face turned ashen.  “Yes.  Yes I would,” I replied.  And it was delicious.

It feels like forever since I last raced.  I can’t really count the races I’ve done in CA this year as race days, since I lasted like 2.03 minutes in each.  I’m heading to Battenkill right now, which is a one-day race in Cambridge, New York.  It’s the only “spring classic” we have in the states, and involves numerous gravel sections and some steep rolling climbs.  It should suit me well and I’m extremely motivated to crush it here since it’s one of the courses I feel that suits me perfectly.  I was hoping for cold rain, but it looks like it’s going to be 70 degrees with a chance of showers.  So we might get some mud if we’re lucky.  (Sidenote: maybe it’s good that it won’t be cold, since on the first segment of my flight I was so cold I tucked my arms into my track jacket like a middle schooler.  Why does everyone immediately turn the air on, blasting them in the face and creating a human fridge in the cabin?  I think everyone is secretly scared, and therefore sweating and needing the air to cool and calm them down.  I always cross my fingers for a plane crash, because that would be a really cool way to die.  And if I survived it would be an awesome story.  In fact if this next plane is as cold as the first one I think I’ll just open the hatch and jump out, which would be an even cooler way to die.)

Wise Guru Coach Sam Ginsing has been packing on the sprints and hard intervals during the last week.  I’ve done so many sprints I have a bruised forearm where my arm presses up against the top part of my handlebars.  It’s only on the right side, so it’s obvious I have some unequal thrashing of the upper body going on.  But to even things out I gouged a large wound in my other forearm while attempting to loosen my pedals—the shark teeth of the large chain ring got me.  Battenkil should prove much more painful, and I hope it lives up to the expectations we all have for it.

Some sports are about teamwork, having fun in the sun, some require specific technique or skill, etc.  Bike racing is some of all of those, but it’s mainly about suffering.  And by suffering, I mean making other people hurt and feel bad about themselves in ways that may or may not make them decide to quit the sport and pick up crocket or something.  I think most of us were born with an extra large batch of evil in us that needs a way to get out, and inflicting pedal pain on our rivals is the best way to relieve the pent up meanness.  A pickup game of basketball has an entirely different feel than a group hammer fest ride, with one involving high fives and the other involving tearing oneself apart to make sure everyone else is hurting at least the same or hopefully more.

Bike racers are a lot like those religious fanatics who whip themselves on the back for Jesus.  As a bike racer you have two whips, one in your left hand whipping your own backs, and another in your right hand whipping someone else’s.  And there’s actually a third whip in the mix, held by someone else who’s whipping you.  So, depending on the size of your whip, I guess you can only inflict half as much pain on others as you yourself are experiencing.

 

 

 

First off, I’d like to acknowledge how happy I am that I’m not up in Seattle or Portland right now, because that weather must suck!  I just looked at the forecast to feel good of myself and it’s pure rain for as far as the eyes can see!  YES!!  I, on the other hand, am currently enjoying an early summer here in Boulder, with mid 70’s and plenty of sun.  For everyone training in the Northwest, I pity your decision to live in the Northwest.

On the third hand, there’s basically no racing here in Colorado compared to what there is in Oregon and Washington.  What few local races there are are few and far between.  I was planning on doing a crit just a few miles away this evening but my legs are way too tired from doing 2-3 hour easy rides the past couple days.  I’m just now getting over my cold, and yesterday was my first decent ride in quite some time.  Man does it feel good to be healthy and riding up hills again.

Redlands did not go okay.  It went extremely, enormously, ridiculously terrible.  I never got over the cold I had during San Dimas and couldn’t even finish one lap with the peloton during the second stage, the Beaumont road race.  The day before, I’d suffered more than I ever have during a time trial, coming in a crappy 111th.  I blew up on the climb, my lungs functioning at half capacity.  It took me five or six minutes after the finish line to get clipped back into my pedals and coast downhill, where I was still out of breath and throwing up.  Luckily it tasted sweet from lemon-lime Heed.  When you’re looking for the optimal vomit taste, always choose Hammer Nutrition products such as Heed and Recoverite.  Nothing else compares with Hammer’s patented “No-Bile-for-awhile” secret formula.  Truly, this vomit tasted just as good as the original product.  And I’m not even being sarcastic or anything, I really do like Heed and somehow the vomit really did taste good.  There are soooo many ways to enjoy Heed, Perpetuem, and other Hammer powders.  Joe prefers, “a quad scoop with a little water on top.  Just a little.”  Wise Guru coach Sam Jansin  likes to make his into pancakes.  John Hornbeck likes his mixed in with a hint of bro-melain (like from a Brocal pineapple since pineapples have bromelain–which is a mix of protein digesting enzymes that can be used to treat sore muscles and inflammation.  I felt like I had to explain this joke since probably no one knows what bromelain is.  Now it’s ruined.  Damn you and your fruit ignorance).

After I licked my lips clean of my delicious barf, I continued the 975 minute coast downhill back to the parking lot.  It only  takes 9-12 minutes to get up the hill, yet somehow it takes an hour or three to get back down.  My cough worsened throughout the day and into the night.  It was my second day on antibiotics, but whatever good they were doing me was thwarted by the effort of the prologue and I was completely useless in the road race the next day.

Two thirds of the way through the first lap of the five-lap race, as we fought for position coming into the KOM climb, I was actually in a really good spot near the front, so I decided to attack.  It was actually a bridge up to two riders who were just off the front by a hundred meters or so, and since the pack had momentarily sat up, I thought it was a good time to go.  Once I was off the front I immediately regretted the decision.  In fact I think I remember regretting it even before I got away, like maybe even right after I took my first hard pedal stroke.  I caught them and tried to regain my breath, since the hill was only a kilometer up the road now, but I wouldn’t regain it for another twenty five minutes, until I was seated in the parking lot next to the van, wondering why I had to get sick AGAIN right before SD and Redlands just like last year.

But the good thing about bike racing, as opposed to Triathlon or Baseball where you only have a few races/games a year, is that there’s always tomorrow, or next week, or next month.  With so many race days, getting sick for some of them is acceptable, though also unavoidable.

In terms of how the race went for the rest of the team:

Dan went home before it stated since he got sick during San Dimas.  Colin took his place but also got sick and didn’t finish the second stage so moped around with me for the rest of the weekend making singing cat jokes.  Jesse got sick at SD too and didn’t start so Steve took his place.  Steve, looking forward to a nice relaxing week of hard training at Agoura Hills during his spring break, was rudely yanked from his pool-house dream resort and its beautiful view of the coastal mountains beyond the edgeless pool at the Grosswendt’s house (the official housing sponsor of The Joe Holmes).

Danny and Ian sharing an intimate moment at the Grosswendt house.  We like to keep things bromantical here at HB.

Steve ended up having a great final day on the hardest course of the race–the Sunset loop– and hung with the leaders for most of the 12 laps until it finally blew to smithereens in a heavy, cold downpour.  He finished 61st overall.  Gabe, who got sick at San Dimas had an amazing recovery and got stronger with each stage, finishing 82nd overall.  Jon, racing his first NRC, had a terrific ride coming in 53rd overall.  Ian, David, and Danny are all part of the Tucson crit crew (so is Steve) and therefore likely believe they’re too ‘cool’ to be mentioned in my blog.  (Sidenote: I had a dream last night that I had a white G-Shock wrist watch–the kind that the crit crew have–and I was super excited about it until I realized it was a cheap fake version).  Okay I guess I’ll mention them, now that I’ve already mentioned them.  Danny had a great first two stages, finishing 59 the first day and 20th the second day, making the front group and eventually finishing 56th overall.  David finished 81st and Ian finished somewhere around 65th, though they somehow messed up the results and have him as DNF.  I don’t think the official results have ever been wrong before.  This is a first for them.

This is the one I want, except I want the version with more gadgets.

Despite half of us getting sick, the whole week of racing (San Dimas and Redlands) went very smoothly thanks to team president and sougnier Alan Schmitz, who drove the van everywhere, made food, fixed bikes, set up everything before and after the races, and generally had a great attitude the entire time, which is crucial for our mental well-being.  It was disappointing not having any particularly great result for the team to thank him with, but it will come sooner or later.

Here are some pictures from the CA trip from Winger’s Tumblr sight.  Click here to see all of them.  Winger wasn’t at Redlands so these are just from team camp and the day before San Dimas.  Basically, for me, before everything went “pear shaped” as JH would say.

Alan on a team camp training ride in Agoura Hills.  Danny appears to enjoy seeing Alan suffer.

There are muscles in Joe Holmes’ triceps that only exist in Joe Holmes’ triceps.

David just havin fun in the sun.  All day ‘er day.

Me having less of a good time.

But a shiny new bike=best of times!

“Oooooooo!!”

Stupid new way to make coffee that everyone’s creaming themselves over.

Gabe thinking about stuff that a Gabe would think about. No one knows what this is, but I imagine it has something to do with woodchucks.

Jesse and his good luck charm. Hey Jesse, if it’s such good luck why’d you get sick? Oh snap!!

This is moments after Jesse hurled a tennis ball at my nuts. Note Alan checking to see if the bike is okay.

Winger and Alan driving the van. Winger annoying Alan while Alan drives the van.

I think it was posing for this very picture that originally got me sick. One mustn’t disrespect the bike racing gods with such a show of self contentedness the eve before an uphill time trial.

New HB Episode.  This one is really good.  And I didn’t want to leave that depressing post about San Dimas up any longer.  So go here, it’s much more entertaining:

http://vimeo.com/38924415

There is little to report in terms of the racing I did last weekend, because I think I totaled about 41 minutes of actual race time.  I started getting “allergies” on Thursday, the day before the uphill time trial.  I don’t actually get allergies, which is why I put them in quotations, signifying that they weren’t actually allergies.  My teammate, Chris W, had been struggling with allergies all week, which we’re assuming was in fact a cold or at least allergies that turned into a cold.  If there’s anyone within a 100 mile radius of me that’s sick, I’m bound to pick up the bug.

So as my fake allergies worsened I drank more and more coffee and antihistamines to combat them.  By morning of the time trial I was feeling pretty bad, but after a hard warm up and a strong jolt of caffeine, I pumped out a decent time to earn 67th out of 150 starters, which wasn’t too bad and was actually an improvement on the last two times I’ve done this course, which for 2012 included even more uphill than in the past.

A torrential storm cleansed the nasty brown smog from the air for Saturday’s circuit race.  After a hearty breakfast of sausage, we dressed for a cold, rainy 12 laps of misery.  I pumped up my confidence as I sat safely cocooned in the warmth of the team’s new Sprinter van, marveling at how awesome I’d be that day and what I’d say for my post-race victory quotes.  I pictured the victory salute: Gorilla Chest Thumps.  I’d woken up that morning feeling worse than the day before, but still hadn’t admitted to myself that I was sick.  It was still just “allergies” from the smog or something.  The rain hammered down hard outside in reality.

Reving high from two liters of coffee, I was amped about the rain, the hard race, the terrible conditions that would crack everyone else (I do better in terrible weather conditions–just like everyone else does too).  I was going to smash this race to bits and there wasn’t a god damn thing that could stop me.  Once the gun went off I immediately felt like stopping.  I began losing positions within the first hundred meters.   Within one kilometer I knew I was in for a wake up call.  How had I been so capable of lying to myself and how I really felt?  My mind had completely ignored what my body had been telling it.  Win? HA!  I’d be lucky to finish.  I was off the back within one lap.  I did one more lap out of frustration then retreated back to the van with Chris, who had also been dropped.

Dan met us an hour later, also sick and also dropped.

Jesse was our top finisher, earning 19th.  He, along with Colin and Gabe, ended up getting sick over the next few days and it’s now the night before Redlands.  It’s looking fairly grim, though I am feeling better each day.  I’m hoping to survive each day and help my non-sick teammates do the best they can do.  Getting sick before big races sucks, but it always happens at some point in the year for me.  There’s nothing I can do to fix it this week.  Just a pile of shit luck.  That’s all I have to say about that and I’m not in the mood for any jokes right meow.

 

 

The crisp, thin air of Colorado has been replaced with thick, warm, moist ocean breezes.  The snow-covered fields, barren, brown hills, and icy mountain roads are a thing of distant memory for me as we ride past palm tree-lined beaches and up steep winding roads melting with black tar.  Nestled in the coastal mountains between Malibu and Agoura Hills, our team camp has been filled with days of relentless sunshine and tear-inducing laughs, reacquainting ourselves with one another by riding bikes and making  inside jokes that no one else will ever find funny but will set the tone for the rest of the year.  There’s no better way to start out the season.

Our team camp, situated the week before Sand Dimes, the first USA crit series race in Tucson, and Redlands is half training camp and half get to know each other camp.  We’re staying at a Salvation Army summer camp– like the place kids would go for summer camp–not the place where they force laborers to produce mass amounts of pocket knives.  Out in the woods, deep set between steep, boulder-strewn cliffs, it’s sort of dissapointing to be here only for bike training purposes, considering there’s 100 miles of hiking trails right outside our door, the ocean is about five miles away with crystal blue water, good waves, and sunny beaches, and there’s a basketball court, ping pong table, AND a cappuccino machine within walking distance right outside!

Unlike a true training camp where the point is to tear one’s legs to pieces during a ten day suffer fest, we’re all slightly tentative to really dig deep this week, considering the important races coming up in the next two weeks.  Damn races always interfering with training!  But this hasn’t stopped us from going a few rounds in the ring and sorting out who’s top dog.   Everyone’s a winner on our team so there’s a contest and a blue ribbon for each participant:

The two KOMs have been won by none other than Jesse and Ian.  Jesse is like 190 kg and Ian’s calves are both pregnant with triplets, so to see them climbing so well is scary for what awaits their competition during flatter races where big power is key.

The crashing award goes to me.  I tasted pavement approximately 21 seconds on our second ride of the week in the parking lot and broke my bike over a particularly cruel speed bump.  I’m not complaining too much, since I ended up getting a brand new bike.  It’s bitter sweet since I’d spent a solid four hours cleaning  and fixing the old one up two nights before. *Edited* My old bike ended up not being that broken so I had to give the new one back :-(

The food consumption award goes to Wingfield.  Normally I would have won this category, but for some reason Winger has been packing his cheeks full like a squirrel readying for the winter.  He’s been eating like a starving child eats in their dreams.  He’s eating so much that his teeth have become visibly worn down in the last two days.  In fact I’d go so far to say that he’s eating like a caged, starved Spencer who’s just escaped his cage and has broken into a Carl’s Junior.  Winger, it DOES show.  Just kidding.  No but seriously, it really does show.  No but seriously, I actually won the eating category.

The pro award goes to Jon.  I mean the bro award.

Vein award: Danny.  If Danny’s veins were in the same room as Lang’s, they’d likely get in a fist fight, have a truce, not talk to each other for a week, get in another fight, come to another truce, then make vein babies once their rage was recognized as passion.

Rooming with Winger award: Gabe

Most sunscreen used award/not enough sunscreen used award: Marcel

Best youtube throwback quote award: Colin.  “I fuckin shower in that shit”.

Dan and David don’t get awards.

Colin.

There are many walk in fridges and freezers to raid here.

 

Just act natural guys.

Okay that’s better Colin.

Ian’s always happy to go for a ride.

Old bike.

New bike.

“Rebecca”

Jesse in a pair of podium legs.  He spent about 3 hours in them.

 

The last three weeks have gone by incredibly slowly. Primarily because I’ve been extremely excited about heading to California for our team camp and first two stage races of the year: San Dimas and Redlands. The last three weeks have also passed annoyingly snail-like because three weeks ago I thought that I only had two weeks until I left. That third week magically appeared out of thin air one day and has been the cause of much agony. But finally, after some killer training and killer rest, I’m on my way. I took a CBC blood test this morning to see what the result of four months at altitude has done to my red blood cell count, then I packed for the trip, ran to the bus stop since I realized I was about to be late, took the bus to the downtown bus station (the bus before the bus: Pro), and I’m currently on my second bus heading to the Denver airport. “Yo dog, I herd u like bus with yo bus so we put some annoying on yo annoying!”

Speaking of annoying, the other day when I was on my way to Performance Bicycles… The story could end here.

But it doesn’t: when I was on my way to Performance I had a not-very close call with a careless SUV driver. She started pulling out in front of me (in a parking lot intersection) looking the other direction. When she finally looked to her left, half way into the parking lot intersection by now, she stopped suddenly and I passed in front of her mouthing the words, “pay attention” and shaking my head. I forgot all about it one minute later as I entered Performance’s grand 50% off sale that they have every other day. My friend Will was working there that day, so I began talking to him about his new Euro Van that he’s currently retrofitting to live out of and travel with for climbing trips. Suddenly the woman who’d nearly, but not really, come close to hitting me in the parking lot came up from behind and furiously asked what I’d said to her in the parking lot. The next five minutes escalated into a one-sided yelling match (her) as I tried to rationally explain to her why she was A) wrong, B) irrational, C) asking for a knuckle sandwich, and, D) a raging lunatic. She kept stepping closer and closer to me as the rest of the store retreated in awe and stifled laughter. This lady was pure nuts. Her eyes were blood shot and yellow and she smelled of a not unpleasant dish of cooked vegetables. She ended every sentence with, “young man!” As in, “I’ve been riding a bicycle a lot longer than you have and I’ve never been that close to a car before or ridden that fast in a parking lot, young man!” She said I was going way too fast for her to even see me. In my defense I had been driving my hunk of junk mountain bike at about 15 miles an hour or less, which was still “way too fast” for a motorist to see. Yes this makes sense, because cars always drive 14 mph or less and when they do go over 15, they become invisible, just like bikes. Anyways, after the argument had finished, with me staying super calm since I could see there would be no reasoning with her (with my calmness angering her even more) she got in line to see the mechanic. Low and behold, she’d been on her way to Performance to pick up her bike. I bought a tire and all the employees came over to laugh in amazement and apologize about her. “Yeah, she’s crazy. She works for the government, so what do you expect?” said one of the Performance guys. I imagine her as some civil bureaucrat, working hard to make sure things never work properly.

The fact that she was a cyclist herself shows the true hopelessness of the corrupt human mind. You can’t argue with or reason with an irrational, angry, frightened, stupid, or naïve person, so the best thing you can hope for is that you have something in common with them for which to sew the bleeding wound shut and come to terms over a shared passion. If you can’t find one, then you might as well be yelling at a brick wall. In some cases, even if you do have something in common you still might as well be yelling at a brick wall.

I’ve barely touched the bike since Sunday. I did a few easy recovery spins on Monday and Tuesday, and ever since then all I’ve done is some light commuting each day. I trained so hard last week that by Monday I was right on the cusp of getting sick. It took me about three days to get over feeling heavily fatigued, achy, nauseous yet extremely hungry, hot, then cold, yes then no, I was in then I was out, I was up then I was down, wrong when it was right, black and then white. Katy Perry style obviously.

But my immune system prevailed with some COPIOUS, let me spell that one out for you: CO-PEE-US amounts of baked garlic, salmon, and asparagus. With these three miracle foods you can pretty much kiss any illness or injury goodbye. Your kiss may reek like an overused outhouse, but I digrest…garlic very poorly. (That word was spelled wrong on purpose, Grandma. It’s a combo of digest and digress).

I’ve taken to baking most of my food now. Just this past week I’ve discovered the simple ease of baking rather than stir-frying. Are you tired of constantly having to stir things while you fry them? Do you sometimes forget to check on your food every couple minutes, resulting in charcoal?

Pineapple, regular apple, tomato, ahi tuna, asparagus, sweet onion, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, brown Mexican squash, jalapenos, and red bell pepper.

After stopping by my favorite grocery store of all time, Sunflower Farmer’s Market, and buying $700 worth of good vegetables for grilling, Kim COMPLETELY burned everything within 15 minutes. I told her to not use the maximum heat setting, but she was too impatient.  I told her that we should check the food in five or ten minutes to see how it was doing instead of pounding cereal inside like there was no tomorrow, and that if she didn’t know how long pineapple or tuna needed to be on the grill, she should look it up, not just guess. But not everyone is as patient or grilling-astute as me, for this would never have happened had I been in charge.  Kim didn’t listen to me at all and burned all the food to an inedible crisp. Even the raccoons will get cancer if they consume even the slightest bit of the carcinogen-laden burnt bits of “food” we scraped off the grill into the lawn.

(Of note: famous pro triathlete Matt Reed eats the same cereal I do: Panda Puffs!)  Kim and I had the failed BBQ at his place since Kim is house sitting for him.  And because he’s away for the month and I knew he wouldn’t want a single Puff of peanut buttery Panda to go to waste, I helped lighten the load on his pantry by finishing a box or two).

But back to baking: are you a lazy slob who just wants to watch youtube clips of Paris Nice and forget about stirring things for hours on end and would prefer for your food to do its own damn cooking? Well I’ve got the solution for you! Baking!

It’s so simple. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it before, so let me explain. All you do is chop up everything and put it in a baking dish, cover with tin foil, and put it in the oven for 20-50 minutes. Why, right now I’ve got a luke-warm tub of baked veggies and canned salmon sitting in my knapsack just waiting to be opened on the airplane for everyone to vicariously enjoy. In it: 1 massive bunch of asparagus (87 cents/pound at my favorite grocery store of all time: Sunflower Farmer’s Market), mushrooms, tomatoes, eight cloves of hard neck garlic, one can of canned salmon, spices, salsa, and some chopped up ham I found in the back of the fridge. (Warning: extended periods of time spent consuming more than two cloves of hard neck garlic per day will result in garlic intolerance syndrome, a condition that results in terrible digestive issues occurring every time you consume more hard neck garlic).

Goodbye.

I lost the beginning of this post somehow.  I’d saved it as a draft a few days ago and now it’s gone from WordPress.  It was a bad start, so I’m not too unhappy about the loss.  This, in my opinion, is a much better start: talking about a lost bad start.  Maybe not.

I’m just gonna go about this blog post with a structured day to day format in an effort to crack the facts and omit the shit so you guys don’t have to read 3,000 words.  You know, writing 3,000 words two or three times a week could have seen the completion of my novel by now, but my life is so much more interesting than fiction, at least I think so.  If it wasn’t, I’d probably watch a lot more tv than I do.  Though I’m not one to dispute the fact that I’m easily entertained, so maybe TV is actually too much thinking for me.

TV.  Good transition point.  I was going to stick to the day to day thing but time is irrelevant to thought and if I see a good transition for the taking, I takes it.  I moved to a new house the other day.  A house with a TV in my room facing the bed.  It has a DVD player and cable.  As you can imagine, the quality of my life has increased ten fold with these two devices.  I can lay in bed (I’m sleeping in a bed too now, not an old futon covered in dog hair) and watch TV and eat confiscated cereal from someone’s cabinet downstairs.  I hope they’re not reading this right now.  If you are, I’m just joking.  If you’re not, then I’m not joking.  The key is to eat a little from each box.

There’s something extremely soothing about coming home from a hard ride in the cold, confining yourself in a dark room, hiding under the blankets and letting your mind melt with a solid hour of South Park or a movie you’ve watched seven times before.  The thing about watching movies at home, for me, is that when I’m searching for a movie among a stack of DVDs, I only look for movies I’ve seen before and can recognize the title.  If I come across one that I don’t recognize, I usually don’t watch it unless I’m super desperate.  Instead, I go through the stack of DVDs like five times contemplating whether I’d be more bored watching Bad Boys II for a fifth time or Dances With Wolves for a sixth time.  Why don’t I try something new?  Why do I insist on re-watching the known when there’s a perfectly good unknown sitting there right in front of me in the form of Fried Green Tomatoes?  Maybe it’s because when I watch a movie at home all I really want to do is zone out and not think about anything too hard.  Unfortunately I’m not alone in this mindset, judging by the decreasing IQ of the general public.  The fact that they made a Bad Boys II is proof of this.

Are our lives too stressful for what our minds and bodies were designed for?  The hunter gatherer lifestyle was certainly more demanding physically, but mentally maybe not.  I for one perfer to deal with physical stress than mental anxiety like sitting in traffic or waiting in line at the post office, grocery store, or basically waiting in line for anything.  I hate waiting in line!  Can’t everyone see that I’m more important than them and have better things to be doing!  Why don’t they just get out of my way??!!

I assume most people’s lives are much more stressful than my own, since I don’t have a career or a family to look after.  When time for exercise is taken away and replaced with sitting in a car during rush hour, and time that was meant for socializing in a small group during a hunt is spent staring at a computer screen in a cubicle, damn it this sentence is too run on.  Anyways, when those important things we evolved to do are taken away and replaced with artificial stresses of the modern world, bad things happen to our brains.  The good chemicals are replaced with bad chemicals, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.  TV is a way to relax and escape the mundane and stressful situations of real life, unfortunately most people’s lives don’t have enough real stimulus as it is, and TV does not make up for stimulus.  And neither does stress.  The answer to all humanity’s problems? Reading my blog, which is both stimulating and relaxing at the same time.  Like a raspberry flavored popsicle on a hot summer evening, singing your tongue with tartly sweet cold shimmers after a long, hard day hiking in the wilderness, I mean at the cubicle.

Monday the 20th (I’m back on the day to day list format now because I know everyone wants to know the exact details of what I did every day this past week): I can’t remember what I did today.  I didn’t ride so therefore I have no recollection of the day’s events.  I’d just assume this day never existed since I can’t remember a single thing about it.  The only evidence of anything ever happening is if it’s inscribed on memory, which is why a tree falling in the woods is only heard if there’s a bear shitting there.

Tuesday the 21st: PANCAKE DAY.  You already know about this.  Get ready to re-live it with Waffle Day on March 25th.

Wednesday the 22nd: 2 hours on the trainer since it was so windy I couldn’t ride on the road.  The old oak tree beside me that I was riding the trainer next to was bending so badly I moved the trainer four times to try and find the safest spot in case the tree fell down.  Since the tree covered the entire back yard and there was no safe place to go, I ended up deciding that the tree probably wouldn’t blow over and if it did I’d just jump off the trainer real quick.  If no easy solution presents itself, just have faith.  The restaurant was busy tonight.

Thursday the 23rd: more easy trainer riding. (The first half of this week was a mini rest week).  The restaurant was busy again.  I’m guessing the wind is blowing people into our parking lot and they can’t leave, so they get hungry and have to come in and eat to build up their strength before attempting to ride away again.  Then I remember they’re in cars and the wind doesn’t affect their transportation plans.

Friday the 24th: Long intervals.  The first one went well.  The second one did not.  I finished it hard anyways.  I was wrecked the rest of the day.

Saturday the 25th: Gateway group ride!  AND Africa Night!  Finally!  I’d been salivating about this day for the past week.  It was going to be over 50 degrees, I was ready for some good suffering, and the Africa Night was going to be an awesome event filled with drumming, good food, and maybe–just maybe–I’d be allowed to try one of the Ethiopian beers I always describe in detail to the customers with phrases like, “The Bedele is a slightly sweater, fruiter lagger while the St. George is a bit heavier and definitely a lot more stout,” but then I have to follow it up with, “Well, actually I’ve never tried either of them so I don’t really know, but that’s what I’ve heard.  And I don’t really know anything about the wines either.  They all just taste like wine to me, and I don’t like wine unless I’m already drunk.”

On Saturday morning I woke up on time, ate breakfast on time, drank my coffee on time, pumped up my tires on time, put oil on my chain, got all my ride food ready (who am I kidding, this is the first thing I did after breakfast), got dressed, then sat around on the internet for half an hour until I realized I was going to be late.  But not to worry, for last week I’d shown up at 9:55 and had to wait around in the cold for 15 minutes before everyone was ready to go.  So today I’d done my waiting inside and would show up just before 10:10 with a few minutes to spare before we rolled out.

I got to the Gateway parking lot on the outskirts of town and no one was there.  I went into a terror.  I LIVED for this day.  This entire last week had solely been about waiting for the group ride to happen.  I started riding hard in the direction they went, hoping I’d catch them.  After a few minutes I thought that maybe they just hadn’t arrived yet.  After all, maybe they were all taking their time to get ready and ride over late like I did, not wanting to wait in the cold for all those idiots who show up late at 10:10.  I went back to the parking lot and waited for 10 minutes, slowly realizing that it was A) daylights savings or B) that I’d missed the ride.

Mad at myself a little, but mainly at them for leaving on time, I rode out to meet them at the half way point.  After an hour and a half of riding I saw the group coming towards me at last and finally convinced myself that it wasn’t daylights savings and that I’d just shown up late.  I did a U turn, joined the front and started taking pulls in the pace-line.  The group was smaller than the 150 starters they’d begun with, but it still needed some trimming to shed the fat.  Luckily the horsepower was there today to do just that, with four or five Optum KB guys, a handful of other pros, and some local cat 1 heroes.  Within a short amount of time we’d detonated the field.  The crosswinds had picked up and we were echeloning over into the yellow lines at times, yelling “car up” just in time to swerve over into the right lane.  It wasn’t safe or legal, though neither is having sex with a prostitute, but someone’s got to do it.

Mike Friedman was a beast.  He pretty much single-handedly soloed to the last sprint of the day with about 10k to go.  One guy was with him but it was basically just Mike pulling with the other dude hanging on for dear life.  Mike is going to win some races this year, and soon too.  Like in the next couple weeks.  The remaining group of us, around 8-10 guys at this point, rolled through the sprint sign 10 seconds after him and the hard part of the group ride concluded with Zirbel flatting a rear tire.  None of the other guys had a pump longer than 3 inches, so I got out the floor pump I strap to my top tube and pumped his tire, resulting in me getting a free cup of coffee half an hour later when we stopped at a cafe for re-charging.  This was the second day in a row I’d helped someone with a flat tire, significantly decreasing my own chances of flatting during races (flat tire karma).  Yesterday I stopped on my way up Sunshine after my intervals were done to help a guy who looked like he needed help.  He’d flatted, changed the flat, and then the valve on his spare tube had broken off.  No patch kit.  No one ever carries a patch kit for some reason.  Anyways, I gave him a tube and pumped his tire for him.  He was lawyer and I was hoping he’d offer me a job doing something at his law firm but I think I bragged too much about how good my team was and he must have assumed that I didn’t need a job doing lawyer stuff since he didn’t offer me one.

After the coffee break, Lachlan and the Optum guys and I headed to the mountains to do some “hard but not all out climbing.”  Turned out we were going a bit harder than that, and alhough the power meter didn’t say it was that hard, after four hours of ride time the two climbs we did were basically threshold efforts.  Since I was the only non-pro in the group, my ego couldn’t afford to be dropped and I made sure to go to the front to increase the pace just before we got to the top.  Pro…I mean amateur.

The second climb on Flagstaff hurt even more than the one on Sunshine.  I rode on my own after that and ended the day with a very solid five hours in my legs.  Time to go eat and lie in bed for the rest of the afternoon.  Except not.  I got home, rushed into my work clothes and rode to work, 10 minutes late with a tub of pre-made oats in my Shimano shoe string back pack calling my name as I sprinted through yellow lights on my way to Ras Kassa’s African Night.  I wouldn’t get home until 2:15 am.  Curse you Africa Night!!!

Rolling and cutting the still-warm fresh Injera.  One on the cutting board, one in my mouth.  One on the cutting board, two in my mouth…

I can’t remember her name since I’ve never worked with her before, but I think she’s one of Tsehay’s relatives.  Tsehay wasn’t here today.

Abesha and Malang getting ready.  Malang organized Africa Night, made the food, and performed on the drums.

Some of the stews we serve.  Yellow split peas, spicy red lentils, collard greens.

Trunkis.  Not sure if the spelling is correct on that one.

Abesha warming up the drums.

Malang.

Abesha making some goat cheese dip.  I’ve been temporarily banned from making it because I used way too many hot chilies last time.

Goat cheese dip is GOOD.

I made the hummus.  I got in trouble for adding too much chili last time I made this too.  (In actuality I’m the shit at making hummus and goat cheese dip.  I have the magic touch).

Malang about to make the BEST cabbage dish I’ve ever had in my entire life.  Seriously, this was amazing.  I took home a huge box of it when I went home.

Jason bar-tending.  The girls: “Why is he taking pictures of us?  Jason: “Oh don’t worry about him.”

Some break dancing broke out before everyone got up to dance for the rest of the night.

The drumming was amazing.  Loud, long, and trance-inducing.  Unfortunately I wasted all my camera’s space on video instead of pictures.  And my camera takes horrible video.

Sunday: I went out for a five hour ride but ended up only doing two since I was beat from the night before.  In replace of the long ride I went to Alfalfa’s grocery store to use the internet, drink decaf coffee, and start writing this blog post.  I decided to bring some of the leftovers I had from last night to one of the homeless people that populate the corner of Broadway and Baseline.  I found the skinniest-looking one of them, named Howard, and gave him the box of Ras Kassa’s.  He asked if it was warm, I said no but suggested he come with me to Alfalfa’s a block away and use their microwave.  I ended up getting him a coffee too and he began talking about some crazy things, thoroughly entertaining me for the next hour as people tripped over his backpack in the cafe area.  A girl told me that I was doing a really nice thing.  I thanked her, but I disagree.  I had already eaten one box of Ras Kassa’s leftovers earlier that day and didn’t need the extra calories of the second box.  And I didn’t want the food tempting me later that night, and throwing it away was not an option, since I hate seeing good food go to waste.  So it was really my own selfishness and dislike of food-wasting that brought dinner to Howard’s stomach, not kindness.  Helping someone out with the intent of feeling good about oneself is not philanthropic.  True kindness for strangers is a rare thing, for even Mother Teresa thought she was going to Heaven.

Monday: Intervals.

Tuesday: MORE intervals.  These ones might have been the most epic set of intervals I’ve ever done.  I started the ride feeling decent, but not great.  After a 50 minute warm up I headed up my designated 6-minute interval hill.  I hammered out the first one with legs of lead and lungs of laringitis.  Was I really going to be able to do five more of these?  Wise guru coach Sam Johnson was only allowing 2 to 2.5 minutes of rest.  This was going to hurt.  I summoned the courage for the second.  I did it but was now dying.  The third.  I was dead.  The fourth.  I was rudely awakened from the peaceful slumbers of death to be whipped in the eyeballs with barbed wire soaked in lemon juice and salt.  The fifth.  It began snowing, increasing the hard man points I was currently earning.  The added adversity and distraction of the snow gave me strength.  I reached the top of the hill and unclipped (it’s really steep and I’m always too out of it to look over my shoulder for cars and make a U turn in the middle of the road so I just stop and unclip for a second).  I headed down the hill and the snow turned into a blizzard.  I got to the bottom and turned around, my short rest was over, Rob Zombie was blaring, the snow was coming down so hard I couldn’t see more than 40 feet in front of me.  The wind was forcing it sideways to the right, then suddenly it would change direction going to the left now.  I started the interval, going harder and harder, pumping out 30 more watts than any of the other intervals.  I went into a trance, the sideways snow, the cold wind, and the Vo2 effort forcing my eyes crossed.  With a minute to go I hammered all out in sprint, harder and harder as the road’s gradient increased and my imaginary finish line came into view.  I crushed Peter Sagan in a desperate, all out sprint and bike throw to the top of the hill at Big Bear during stage 6 of the Tour of California and I collapsed over my bars at the end with slobber and snow covering my face and a terrible side cramp that had been growing worse and worse since my third interval.  I was extremely pleased with my effort.  I took a picture when I got home:

Some people try to capture themselves in their best light and deceive us with a non-ugly picture of themselves.  I’m all about looking my worst in the pictures I take of myself (just as long as I don’t look fat).  That way, after seeing a bunch of ugly pictures of me, when someone sees me in person they’ll think I’m better looking than I really am and because of that, offer me food or other services (because that’s what inferior-looking people are supposed to do for better-looking people, or so the movies tells me.)

In this picture I’m sure you’ll note the excessive load of snot in my nose, which is not to be confused with the bits of soft boiled egg on my chin.  I made a bunch of soft boiled eggs the other day and the entire batch came out extremely hard to peal.  I did some interneting and found a way to peal hard boiled (not soft boiled) eggs without having to do any pealing at all! Imagine that!  World saved!!! I have my doubts if it works as well as they claim, but what you do is soak the already cooked eggs in cold water with baking soda, break off the two ends of the egg, then blow hard on one side and the egg pops right out of its shell.  It’s on youtube.  I only had patience to soak the eggs for 10 seconds since I’d just come home from a ride and was hungry, and then I tried the blowing trick with one of my soft boiled eggs.  I blew extra hard, to make up for the lack of time the egg soaked in the baking soda water.  Imagine someone having projectile diarrhea, except that their diarrhea is actually soft boiled egg.  It went everywhere, all over the wall, across the kitchen counter, on the stove…  So I ate the next two eggs with a spoon, which proved almost equally as messy since they were really soft, soft boiled eggs.  Like barely cooked.

After the egg eatings I moved out of the place I’ve been living in for the past four months because I didn’t want to pay rent while I was away in California during March, and I also didn’t like living with my former roommate since he is a slug.  I packed most of my belongings in two bike boxes, borrowed a car, and made two trips across town to unload my junk in a friend’s room (Kim) who will be away housesitting during March and therefor I’ll have the room to myself.  The room has a gigantic bed and what I believe to be memory foam pillows and bed cover.  Standing four feet high, the bed is situated at an altitude, unlike my futon, which does not requires crouching down to the ground to get into bed.  Even better, it doesn’t require doing a squat every time I get out of bed.  And sleeping up off the ground is a good 10 degrees warmer too.  I believe these are some of the reasons bed frames were invented: to reduce squats, to reduce crouching, to increase warmth, and to live above the fleas from house pets.  Here at the new house there are no footsteps above my room to wake me up early in the morning, no barking dogs, no roommate coughing loudly from emphysema, and no futon crease in the arch of my back all night.  I slept in till 11:44 this morning.  A solid night’s sleep indeed.

Wednesday: I rode 5 hours.  Six times up to the top of Flagstaff in celebration of the Tour of Colorado’s decision to end the Stage 5 Golden to Boulder route on Flagstaff.  Unfortunately they didn’t want the racers to have too tired of legs for the final day’s time trial in Denver so they ended Stage 5’s climb at the amphitheater, which, as all Boulderites know, is NOT the top of Flagstaff, just barely half way up.  And it skips the hardest part of Flagstaff which is at the top.  This final section of the climb would have been awesome for both the spectators and the racers to do battle on (literally: as in the racers weakly and comically punching the spectators out of the way as they ran drunkenly next to them, or more likely walked next to them–it’s really steep.  There’s nothing more annoying than seeing those stupid sumo wrestlers almost knock over the GC winner during an attack.  Actually, having herpes is probably more annoying.  I Rode With GPS’ed the Golden to Boulder route here: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/967916

100 miles and 11,300 ft of climbing aint bad.  Although, I did 13,000 ft today.

Thursday: Having a complete rest day meant that I completely forgot to go to work.  I’d been lazing around watching a movie when it dawned on me that it was Thursday, 5pm and I was supposed to be somewhere half an hour ago.  I ran downstairs, put my plans of making French toast on hold, pulled my pants of of the washing machine, and rode to work with them wet and freezing against my legs.

Friday: Finally up to date.  I rode easy today and ate an entire box of Panda Puffs peanut butter flavored corn cereal, part of the EnviroKidz line.  It’s gluten free so therefore it’s healthy and can be marketed as such to dumb parents who think that anything in the organic section is health food.

I finish up this final week of hard training with two more big rides on Saturday (the Gateway ride that I’ll be on time for tomorrow) and Sunday: a long sloberfest of intervals, sprints, and climbs.  Then it’s a bunch of rest days before team camp, where I’m going to “keep it holstered” in the hills.  Ha.  Whoops that was over 4,000 words.  Did anyone read all of this?