Author: kennettron

Dear TSA (Tremendously Shitty Assholes),

I recently traveled from Portland to Tulsa and found a note inside my luggage stating you’d raped my bag and its contents.  From the tape job on my bike box, it appears you thoroughly raped that as well.  I fear that when I open it I will be less than surprised to find out that some of the contents are missing or damaged.  (You broke a $2,500 bike frame of mine last year).

But back on the topic of hand.  The note indicated that you stole something from me: a bottle of “flammable” bike chain lubricant.  Your reasoning, I assume, being that it was dangerous and would cause a fire in the luggage compartment.  I’ve had this bottle of chain lube for many months and to date, 100% of the time it has never started any fires while harmlessly lying either in the garage or in my tool bag.  Likewise, it has never burst into flames during the many times I’ve traveled with it on airplanes.  This brings me to my first question.  Since it had never been confiscated in any of the prior flights I’ve taken, what kind of special technology do you have that allowed you to determine that THIS time it was certain that it would bring down the plane in flames?  This amazing technology is the only explanation I can think of because I’ve seen that you’re so good and thorough at your job that I KNOW you wouldn’t have accidentally missed it one of those other times I traveled with it.  You should probably contact the makers of the chain lubricant, White Lightning, and let them know about the new equipment that can sniff out how much time these ticking time bomb bottles of chain lubricant have before detonation.  I’m sure they’re eager to acquire a machine of their own and stop the growing number of customer deaths by printing the explosion date on the bottle and urging users to discard the product before it spontaneously combusts.  Finally we can end all these horrific bike shop and garage fires caused by exploding bottles of chain lube!

My next question: how do you sleep at night knowing the entire planet is anxiously awaiting each and every one of your suicides?  Are you too stupid to be aware of this fact or are you all secretly planning some gigantic, cool, televised, mass suicide event in the coming months?

Go something yourselves,

-Kennett P.

Stage 5 was a 91 mile saunter through the gently rolling hills below Mt. Hood.  Included in the torturous terrain were four categorized climbs totaling 10,200 feet of ascending.  A day for the climber.  Or…a day for the Kennett on a rampage!

I took my own advice from my earlier post and perseverance DID pay off today.  Not with a super great result, but with a decent one and earned with a lot of aggressive riding and hardcore suffering, the way I usually race and hope to always race in the future.  My mind was finally in a good place today, and along for the ride were a pair of fairly good legs as well.  In fact, somehow I felt better today than I did any other day this weekend, which is strange (and I’m not talking just comparatively to other riders either, I mean my power was actually better and came easier today than the past three days somehow).  I guess it just took me a long time to open up or something.  Who knows.  The only thing I can think of is that I’ve been able to sleep the past two nights and I’ve also cut way down on meat and junk food since yesterday (Off-the-bike junk food that is.  I still eat apple pies during the race, along with my Hammer bars and gels).  Evan Hyde and Dustin Ransom will back me up here when I say that the inflammatory effect that meat and most grains have on our bodies might outweigh their benefits by delaying recovery and damaging muscles.  I’m going to go back to my low meat, low grain diet focusing on fruit and almond butter (supplemented with iron-rich clams of course) and see how I feel the next couple weeks.  That’s what I had been doing for the three weeks before my diet went to shit for the beginning of this race and I didn’t have one bad day in that time period.  Onto the race report:

Our team’s super secret plan for today was to get me and at least three other guys (hopefully including Dan who entered the day at 8th GC) off the front in the first hundred meters of the race.  I warmed up on the trainer, getting flack from most of my own team as well as others passing by.  But there’s nothing worse than forcing cold muscles into a v02 effort, so warming up for 20 minutes was worth it.

We started just below the Cooper Spur ski lifts and the first 15 miles of the race were all downhill.  I thought the idea of blowing my entire wad in the first 10 minute of the race sounded appealing, so I was eager to get the hurt on as we lined up at the start.  GO!!  Spencer got clipped in right before me and took off in a full sprint.  I caught him and within 4 seconds of the starting pistol we were off the front, passing the lead motorcycles and yelling at them to get out of the way.  In hindsight I don’t think there was an actual starting pistol.  Only in my head.

For the next 14 minutes it was full gas.  Spencer was taking the sharp corners better than me but I was pulling through too hard and gapping him off, so our cohesion was somewhat lacking on my part.  I think at the very most, our lead got up to about 15 seconds, so not much.  We were caught as the hill’s steepness lessened and both of us were well into the red, having already spent a good amount of time above 600 watts in the race’s infancy while 95% of the field had just been coasting.  I continued to attack of course.  After a few minutes of rest.

After a while, Lang got away with a big group so Spencer and I sat on the front to slow the peloton down a bit.  I chased down some bridge attempts until I saw that I was off the front again, solo, midway between the break and the field.  It didn’t last too long, for the field caught me right as the road took a 180 degree turn and went up a steep climb.  I drilled the base of the climb and got up to some riders who were either falling off the break or had been just ahead of me and had been trying to bridge up to them a minute earlier on the descent.  That group exploded.  I quickly found out that my legs were not feeling so swell from all the attacking and sat up before I completely blew up.  I was pretty worried that we were on the first big climb, in which case I’d be fucked to high heaven since it was supposed to be like 10 or 15 miles long (we’d been climbing now for a total of 3 minutes).  The field caught me and I dropped like a stone, going straight back to the tail end, cutting through the peloton like a hot knife through cream cheese or something of that sort.

My worries were over before I knew it and we topped out on the short climb and began a very gradual descent.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  I picked my way up the sides in the gravel, riding pretty ballsy and putting some good faith in the toughness of my Vittoria tires as I veered off the road through boulders and tree branches.  I arrived at the base of the next short climb (like five minutes long) near the front just in time.  It was the first of the single lane Forest Service roads and the field blew up.  I made the front group over the top, though the field came together pretty much entirely afterwards.

The descent after the climb was filled with potholes, which I hit two of head on.  Tires still held strong.  The descent ended and the road went up again, though not very steep and into a headwind so the group sat up, not wanting to take any chances of blowing themselves up before the climb got steep again.  I was not worried about this and attacked.  I had weaved my way from the rear to the front and attacked into the headwind.  Two guys had already gotten up the road a few minute prior, but I didn’t even try to bridge up there since they were booking it.  I pretty much sat up and started riding hard tempo to wait for some guys to come up to me.  I sat just below my threshold just in case the road got steep for the next 10 miles or 20 miles.

Part of me wishes I’d pre-ridden or driven the course, or at least looked at the elevation profile.  The other part of me is glad that I didn’t.  It would have been nice to know how much longer a certain climb was, but at the same time it might not have been, depending on how much pain I was in and my mental state.  Instead, I entered each climb without a clue.

Anyways, a RideClean guy bridged up to me as the climb eventually got steeper.  I sat on and didn’t pull, smartly so because he was tiny and didn’t seem to mind the increasing gradient.

All a sudden nine or more guys caught us and we began drilling it even harder.  Eventually it was down to eleven of us when the single lane road evened out a bit.  We already had a 1:20 gap on the field at that point.  I pulled through on the undulating climb/descent a few times, but didn’t really put too much effort into it since I was worried about getting dropped if things went ballistic, which they did.

As the road took a final pitch change and got up to 15% at the base of the final riser with 5K to the top, the break split up.  I was sitting sixth wheel when I realized a small gap was opening up with three guys riding away from me and the two guys in front of me.  There was already a substantial gap back to the remaining guys behind us.  I was still riding at threshold and a surge above that might have blown me up, or so I thought at the time.  The guy in front of me jumped around the guy who had opened up the gap and made it onto the back of the three up the road.  Me and the other guy slowly lost ground on them as we smashed our legs up the steep, broken pavement surrounded by 10-foot high snowbanks.   By the top the most of or all of the other guys who had been dropped on the earlier slopes of the climb caught back onto us.  I regret not just going for it all out and making the group with the faster climbers, because my group ended up losing two minutes to them over the next 20 miles.  I just had no idea what I was going to be capable of or what the rest of the climb was like.

We descended for a long time, almost had a head on collision with an SUV around a blind corner since the road closures today were absolutely terrible, then entered the loop again for one more lap of that climb.  By the top of that climb our gap to the field had gone from almost four minutes down to three.  Another blistering descent and the third KOM climb started.  I could see the field up on top of the clear cut hill to our left after we came down the mountain, crossed a river, and started going back up a steep climb on the other side of the valley.  I punched it hard, hoping to get as much climbing done at my own pace as possible before the field caught me.

It didn’t last long and I was eaten up in no time.  I dug super deep here and made it into the race leader’s group, just off the back of a few of the best climbers as they attacked up the climb.  I held on to that group for a while but eventually dropped off from what was left of this lead group and became part of an eight man group that contained Olhieser (the race leader) and a number of other pretty strong dudes including my old teammate Sean Passage, who’s riding superb this year.  From there on it was just a lot more climbing, a HUGE amount of crazy descending, and then a lot more climbing.  Long story short(er), I ended up placing 22nd and moved up to 43rd.

A lot of “what ifs?” went through my head as I laid on the parking lot pavement at the finish sipping on a Coke.  What ifs as in, “what if my legs hadn’t felt like shit the first three days of the race.”  Strange how your body works.  If I had had the legs I had today I certainly would have had a much better race and likely placed top 20 on GC (in my opinion).  As it was, even today’s ride got me 43rd, which is pretty crazy since I lost like 13 minutes on the very first road stage.  Whatever.  I was happy to finally have a good ride.  I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever feel good again this year (probably a bit of an unnecessary freak out since I’d only felt bad for half a week).

After Mexican food with the team, Spencer and I went home and made and ate a cheesecake.  Lang, who finished 4th today and 11th overall!, stopped by to see if it was ready before he took off to Seattle.  We had told him about it earlier that afternoon, but were having second thoughts about sharing once the thing was made and ready for eatin.  We didn’t say no, but we didn’t say yes either.  In fact, we had just been eating it when we saw Lang run over to our house from across the street in the pouring rain from the current thunderstorm, and we quickly hid it and wiped our mouths clean.  We’re good teammates on the bike at least.

Spencer enjoying some of the finest cherry cheesecake known to humankind.  Only 350 calories per serving! (of three servings each).  Lang, you don’t get any.

These are the only two pictures I took this weekend. I choose wisely.

I’ll do one more post tomorrow or the next day with all the pictures of our team that I can scavenge from facebook and other websites.

In other, more serious news, we had two teammates go down hard in crashes this week.  Alan Adams broke his neck during the first road race and also suffered a serious concussion.  He doesn’t remember how he crashed.  He’s up and walking around now and seems to be in good spirits, though he’ll have to wear a neck brace for the next 6-8 weeks.  A very close call (not that breaking your neck is a good alternative to anything) and we’re super happy it didn’t end up worse.

Chris Parish was taken out by a very careless motorcycle (not race affiliated) during the time trial and fractured his skull.  I drove the van with Colin to the scene of the accident upon hearing Dan’s frantic description of seeing Chris lying face-down on the road after passing him in his TT.  Chris didn’t need us though, since the paramedics and police were already there.  But after hearing what happened, it took all my willpower to not crush the motorcyclist’s face with my foot.  The next 24 hours were very scary for us as we didn’t really know what Chris’ condition was.  All we knew was that he had a fractured skull and was being transported to a hospital in Portland.  Turns out that he’s taking a turn for the better and everything is looking OK in terms of his immediate condition.  Chris, if you’re reading this we all killed it extra hard for you today after Joe’s corny speech to us before the race about “WWCPD?” and how we should dig just a bit extra deep today in your name.   Cliche as it sounds, it worked.  Get well soon!

PS I can’t remember how to download the SRM files onto Training peaks with my Apple… soooo when you’re up to it you should give me a call and tell me how to do it.

This is going to be short and to the point because I’m tired, ready for bed, and actually sleepy for once this week!  For some reason I wasn’t able to sleep more than an hour the night after the prologue (too much coffee probably) and I’ve been paying for it ever since with a strange headache that won’t go away.  Last night was better and I got a few Zs, but not nearly enough.  A solid night’s sleep should do the trick–unfortunatley we just finished a late night crit, which is followed by an early road race start tomorrow morning.  Thank you race organizers.  Great planning.

The TT this morning: Wow.  My legs haven’t felt that bad in a long time.  I wanted to give it a hard effort and see what I could do or at least get some more TT work in, but warming up at 175 watts was killing me.  So, to conserve something for the crit and tomorrow’s stage I ended up riding easy and  at the very bottom of my tempo just to make sure I made the time cut.  Although, even riding easy hurt.  Looking at the results I’d say there were a lot of other people who felt the same or worse than me.

The crit went ok.  I definitely felt better than this morning, but I still didn’t have much kick in me.  I fought for positioning the entire race riding between 50th and 20th wheel, waiting for a chance to attack.  Mike Olheiser had gone up the road solo on the first lap and was slowly extending his lead every few minutes.  It went from 15 seconds to 21 seconds to 30 seconds 3/4ths of the way into the shortened, 60-minute race.  By then it was apparent that he was going to stay away no matter what.  My hopes of resting in the pack while the field chased him down so I could save all my bullets for a single amazing counter attack were over.  Instead, we were going to be battling for 2nd.

With 10 to go guys started launching themselves up the road.  The organized chase, if you could call it that, was over.   7 laps to go I saw a few guys escape after Dan was brought back from a move and I went hard up the first hill before the finish line, getting a solid gap and quickly catching one guy who was trying to bridge up to two others up the road.  I flew by him then caught the two up the road.  That hard bridge move killed me and I sat on them for a lap before taking any pulls.  The move looked pretty good and I thought we’d stay away, but it was short lived and the three of us were caught with 4 to go.  I attacked again immediately right as the field came up on us but didn’t get a gap and sat up at the start/finish line to get off the front.  By then I was pretty screwed for a couple laps as I tried to recover and I ended up just trying to maintain somewhat of a safe position in the top 30 until the end.  It was a fast crit but not hard enough for it to ever really get strung out or break things up.  I was amazed Olheiser could solo the entire way.  Simply amazing.  I’ll say that word one more time for good measure.  Amazing.  The whole HB team finished in the main group, with Spencer just missing out on the top 10 with an 11th place.

I needed a pick me up after today’s stage so I did a quick google search and found some motivation:

“I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed: and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I fail and keep trying.”

~ Tom Hopkins

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

~ Calvin Coolidge

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”

~ Winston Churchill

The life of a cyclist is full of ups and downs.  Lots of climbing followed by lots of descending.  Lots of suffering followed by lots of resting.  Lots of failure followed by lots of success…wait.  I meant “followed by very little success”.  Let’s face it, there are 100 people in a race vying for one spot.  99% of the contenders are going home unhappy.

But the tiny little bits of success we do see, those fractions of mere glimmers of hope, are the only thing keeping me going–keeping all of us going.  I think you need one good day of riding, one good result or training day every month or two throughout the season to keep your motivation high enough to continue.  For me, I had a couple good days of training last week.  That did it.  I haven’t had a good result all year yet, but those intervals are enough.  If I hadn’t had those, I’d be in serious question if this is what I want to do with my life right now.  But because I had those, I am not asking those questions.  I know I’m progressing.  Slowly but surely.  Every once in a while I surprise myself with an out of character good showing of form.  Though, more often than not, racing has forced me to deal with depression, regret, disappointment, and HUGE let downs.  Basically we’re all a bunch of depressed, semi-anorexic dudes with buff legs who are way too self-conceited for the good of humanity.  Dealing with failure is probably one of the most important things to take away from this sport.  Obviously at some point everyone has to say when enough is enough and either make it their full time hobby (as opposed to full-time life obsession) or just move on entirely.  But knowing when to keep going when it seems like quitting is the only option, and push through the dark moments–that’s what’s really important.  At some point the pace lets up and before you know it you’re off the front.

I had a terrible race today.  Absolutely ridiculously bad.  I finished in a groupeto containing 76th to 95th place, over 10 minutes down. I actually made today much worse than it should have been by getting down on myself mid-way up a long climb, and giving up.  I was riding at the front going into the first ascent of the 7-mile climb about 30 miles into the 85-mile race and blew up half way through.  In fact, I didn’t completely blow up, even.  I sort of realized all of a sudden that I was hurting a lot and wouldn’t be able to maintain my spot in the peloton for the rest of the voyage up the long climb.  It happened suddenly.  One minute I was fine the next I was done.  I thought I should be doing better than I was, and when I saw that I wasn’t one of the top 20 strong guys that day like I thought I should have been, I just gave up and had myself a good old fashioned pitty party.  I should have kept digging hard and would have had a much better race if I had (almost everything came back together on the descent that time) but I had already given up, deciding that if I wasn’t strong enough to do anything today I might as well just give up now and feel bad for myself.  I spent the rest of the race in a groupetto wondering what else I’d do in life if I were to quit the sport right now.  Nothing came to mind, which I think is the answer I was looking for and I decided I should continue racing.  I imagine most people’s physical cracking point is way above where their mental cracking point is.  I usually feel like I can deal with pain pretty damn well.  And I usually feel like I can deal with adversity and suffering and a challenges pretty well too.  Today I could deal with nothing.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know why my legs won’t do what I feel they’re capable of either.  My legs and mind were not where they should have been today, but there’s always tomorrow.

My form has been extremely up and down lately.  Kind of like this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms9IxBXuJbs&feature=fvwrel

I can only wait and continue trying to find out when they’ll feel good again.

I know a lot of cyclist in the same boat as me right now, so for everyone out there, realize we all feel like shit some times (a lot of the time) and that we don’t do this because it’s easy and fun.  Fuck that shit.  What’s the point of doing something easy?  This lifestyle is only worthwhile because it’s extremely ment Continue reading “Stage 2. Mt. Hood. Perseverance. Or lack thereof.” →

Click on the two tiny pictures to zoom in.

This was last year, 2010.

And…

Here’s tonight’s result.  My main goal is to be consistent.  A Job well done with a fine pair of 56th places.

Not to complain or anything, but I’d like to grumble angrily about some things here for a minute. First off, the race organizers spelled my name with a Y, as in Yennett. This meant that I started 3rd from last, since the prologue start order was based on first names going A-Z alphabetically. It was very windy this evening. Everyone got pounded with wind, but it DID pick up considerably as it got later, as well as some light rain. This didn’t stop Scott Tietzel or Zack Garland from getting in the top 10 (two guys with first names close to the end of the alphabet).

I guess I have no excuse for my 56th place today, other than lack of power. Despite trying to trick myself into thinking it was super windy when I went, the truth of the matter is that I had NO GOD DAMN POWER!!!

I’d like to brag again about my intervals I did the other day to make myself feel good.  To refresh your memory, I did 8×4 minutes with 4 minutes rest in between each interval.  I averaged 441 watts for the combined 8, holding back until the very last one, where I pumped out 484 watts.  Today’s prologue was 6.5 to 7 minutes long, which is roughly in the same power zone as 4 minutes, being a v02 effort.  The difference between 6.5 minutes of power and 4 isn’t that great, so I figured on a good day, starting out fresh, I could do 500 watts for 6.5 minutes on a steep hill.  Of course the prologue was not on a steep hill.  So I thought around 450-460 watts would be possible for the course on hand, which was rolling and mainly false flat downhill with a couple short climbs at the beginning and end.  450 wouldn’t be bad at all.

Plus, as an added bonus to my swelling ego, I figured all the time I’ve spent riding the TT bike last week would have transformed me into a TIME TRIAL MONSTER!  I mean, I rode that bike every day for a week!  Come on, what more am I expected to do to prepare for being a TIME TRIAL MONSTER!?

With huge watts on my mind and super efficient time trialing abilities in my back pocket, I headed out the door with a new pep in my step and decided to set my goals high today.  I thought a top 10 was a given.  A top five probable.  A podium likely.  A top 1 for sure (at least).  I began pondering how much I’d win by.  Five seconds?  No, probably more like 13.  “Yeah, 13 seconds is most likely what it will be,” I thought to myself as I stroked my non existent beard ever so confidently.

I warmed up this morning with 30 minutes on the TT bike on the trainer out in the sun.  It was nice.  I felt good.  I had felt really good the day before too.  I was going to CRUSH this thang.

I warmed up in the parking lot on the trainer many, many hours later at 6pm.  I was feeling good.  I was going to crush this thang!

It started getting really windy and rainy and cold.  Not to worry, I was gonna crush this damn thang!

I started.  I easily smashed my gears up the first climb at 700 watts.  The hill ended and I went downhill for a few seconds, then up again briefly.  Pretty soon I was only 15 seconds behind my 30 second man (within the first mile).  I was crushing this thang at last!  Then I started to not crush it.  As the road went downhill, so did my powertap’s readout.  It told me I was riding like a tiny little pillbug, at 350 watts.  I struggled through the low grade descent, not wanting to look down at the powertap.  I was really not crushing it at all anymore.  I hadn’t really blown up though, I just couldn’t put out the watts I needed to be doing.  I passed my 30 second guy finally as the road went up again in the last 2 minutes of the race.  I sat up a bit, then got out of my aero bars once and for all.  My power rose back up to the mid 400’s, then the 500’s, then I was too cross-eyed to look down at it any more.  I crushed it a tiny bit, but not nearly enough to make up for the three minutes of slow riding I had just done.  I crossed the finish line in a thorough amount of pain at 6:58, blowing up half way up the final climb.  Slow.  Super slow.  Average power: 416.  Weak.  Super weak.  I don’t know what happened.  I was super pissed of course.

I guess I still need more practice on the TT bike.  I was 50-60  watts too low today.  I can’t seem to put out anything above 400 when I’m in the aero position.  I need to find more time trials where being aero is of no importance…like in a vacuum.  If I could only find a decent stage race in space…

I’ve come to the conclusion that one week of time trial practice is not enough.

One thing’s for certain: I’ll be on that TT bike every possible day I can from here on out.  It might not happen overnight, but mark my words, one day I WILL be a time trial monster.

I had a killer day of intervals today.  Killer.  My powertap said that I surpassed even my wildest dreams.  8×4 minutes on a super steep, closed-to-the-public-via-gigantic-million-dollar-gates, road up Parrot Mountain.  My only concern with how good I felt is that I just used up my legs’ best day of the year on a damn training ride.  If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that this has happened to me.  What gives me hope this year is that it didn’t happen in January or February like usual, so even if it was my best ride of the year it was at least during the race season and close to a race.

In other news:

After Enumclaw I decided to start getting good at time trials.  My 45th place there was the last straw.  Or is the saying “last draw”? I’m not sure.  No one does.  To get good at time trialing, I’ve heard one must practice on the time trial bike.  As it stands now, I generally lose around 50 watts in the TT position, gathered from the few times I’ve TT’ed with power data.  So training on the TT bike is what I’ve been doing.  It may not be quite enough time to get good by hood.  I’m not sure if a week will cut it, but it’s a start.  So far I’ve been on the TT bike on the trainer every day for the past five days.  My plan is to ride it every morning every day that I have a ride.  If I still ride like a little girl by next year then I know it won’t be from lack of practice and is likely a lack of wind going in my favor.

To help kick-start my new approach and happy feelings towards flat time trials that require pacing, skill, balls, and aerodynamics, Jack VanderZanden has loaned me with some go-fast-wheels and go-smart-pacing equipment.  Both of these things come in the form of a SICK set of wheels.  Observe:

In case you didn’t see, that’s a powertap stuck inside of that Zipp disc…which is quite possibly the badest piece of equipment known to man.  And in case you’re my mom or grandma, I’m using “bad” as a good term.

And to add to the arsonal, check out this bad boy.  Our new team-issued Razor TT helmets:

Now onto my future plans, which I alluded to talking about in the title of this post.  In Kennett’s future lie two paths.  This fall, after race season has commenced, I’m thinking of either going down to the southwest to work for a national park doing trail maintenance and living in the mountains, OR become an Alaskan fisherman.  One of the two.   I’d like to work on one of them crab boats you see on Deadliest Catch, but I heard they don’t take people who’ve never worked on a fishing boat before—and that they don’t take people who don’t own an endless supply of the world’s worst attire for extreme wet/cold conditions: hooded cotton sweatshirts.  I used to own a few of these but they’ve all disappeared.  I lost my last one in a bar a couple years ago when I took it off to dance and left it at a booth.  Some jerk stole it, for it was gone when I returned for it.  If I were to die tomorrow my only regret would be losing that sweatshirt.  That, and chipping my tooth on a small pebble lodged in a Snickers bar I found on the road one day.

It’s only been a day off but I’m already forgetting what happened this weekend so I better start writing quick. That’s one of the main reasons I write in this blog–to make sure I remember things because if I don’t have a written log of it or at least some photos, there’s not a chance I’ll even remember being there come a year or two down the road.

I wrote that last paragraph a few days ago. Now it’s even later in the week and I barely have a clue what race I was even talking about.

Pre stage 1: I picked up Quinn in Lake Oswego. I shouldn’t have done this because he was the eventual winner of the race. We drove up to Seattle and arrived to Sam’s house-sitting house, where Kai, Sam, Christine, and some other people were staying. Sam had gotten out burrito making ingredients for Quinn’s and my late arrival. Plus we ate the last bit of carrot cake. That burrito and cake were the highlight of the weekend. The rest of it’s just about racing:

Stage 1: The next morning we woke up early and I used a gigantic french press to make coffee. I’ve never used one that big, so I was a little intimidated. I think it was the third pot of coffee made, so there wasn’t a ton of pressure on me if I failed, but nonetheless, it was a daunting task. I ended up filling it too high and the grounds ended up mixed in with the coffee, but it was salvageable. Some day when I grow up I hope I’ll own a french press that big.

Stage 1 still: It was a TT. 10Km long and 12.5 minutes if you were fast. I was not fast. I was average, finishing 45th, which was slightly below average since there were 77 people in the race. I blame it on my lack of using a disc wheel or front deep dish, and my lack of training on the TT bike and lack of overall preparation. I’m also pretty sure it got a lot windier when I went off.

Results: Chris was 5th, Ian 12th, followed by Steve, Lang, and me.

Pre stage 2: It’s still the same day as stage 1 (Saturday). Now we find Kennett sitting in a coffee shop (Starbucks) with Chris Parish and his gf Katja. Kennett just used his last $2.41 on his Starbucks gift card on a small hot chocolate. Starbucks is expensive. After heading next door to the QFC grocery store for lunch, Kennett is not sure why people are willing to spend so much money at Starbucks when there’s free ‘Seattle’s Best’ coffee at QFC.

The three are now joined by Lang and Dan Harm and sit by the fake fire place that doesn’t give off much heat. Oh yeah, it was super cold today. I spent (I’m going to stop writing in the third person present tense now because that was annoying and I don’t really know why I started doing it) anyways, I spent the ENTIRE day being cold. I woke up on the couch that morning pretty warm actually, but once I got out from under the blankets I spent the entire rest of the day being cold. The day before, Friday, it was 70+ degrees and sunny down in SoPCW (Southern Pacific Northwest–like SoCal, you should start using this phrase by the way). And now, on Saturday up in miserable Washington where it rains 370 days a year, it was overcast, drizzly, and 55 degrees. I think my body was in some sort of super shock, because while everyone else said they were cold, no one seemed as frigid as me–coming from the tropics of Oregon. My fingers were numb all day!

Anyways, I ate most of a large bag of potato chips (because it’s light food and I’m trying to get light) and some food I brought from home (apples, smashed bananas, some warm keiffer that had been sitting out for a long time and was fizzy, and I finished off most of my pre-cooked oats I brought in some Gladware. I’ve stumbled upon a great discovery on that note. You take your steel cut oats and cook em like normal. THEN you cook them even longer. I’m talking about 45, 60, 70, even 90 minutes or more. I think I cooked these for 90 minutes. Just kept adding water to them to keep them from burning. I forgot once so they did burn a bit, but not too badly. Then you add a lot of salt and a few tablespoons of butter, and almond milk or regular milk. The final product is a bowl of oats you can be proud of. A bowl of oats you can be proud to cal Son, even…if you’re looking forward to eating your son with a spoon.

Stage 2: It was a 70 minute, figure 8 crit. Super tight turns around a little park in downtown Enumclaw.  I was excited for the course, since I knew it would present a good opportunity for slow people to get dropped.  I lined up right at the front and followed Lang’s hole shot move right from the gun.  I sat up a bit after the first corner and let a gap open up to him since everyone was sitting on his and my wheel.  Guys came around and he was caught.  I held top 10 or so for the next couple laps and waited for a good opportunity.  I knew there would be carnage at the back of the pack right now (or assumed there was) and didn’t want to throw away my great spot on a worthless attack.  I waited until lap 3 I think before I went for it.  When some people attack they can’t get a gap, or a bunch of people latch on immediately and a good break is formed.  When I attack usually neither of these things happen.  For some reason I always get a big gap immediately, by myself.  Problem with this is that I don’t have the strength to go solo for long.  Very few people do.  I don’t know if it’s the way I handle my bike that scares people, the way I smell, or just my superb timing, but whatever the reason is, I almost always get a gap when I really attack hard.

I got my gap a couple times but nothing came out of it.  I lead Ian out for the first time bonus prime and he won it.  I stayed near the front.  It began to rain lightly, just enough for someone to crash on every lap–evidenced by someone in the pit sprinting to rejoin us as we went by the start/finish.  I began taking the turns like a turtle hauling a dump truck without any wheels.  Niiiiiiice and slow.  No need to crash here and break my collar bone.  At one point I attacked, got brought back eventually and just sat on the front for most of 3 laps because I didn’t want anyone going down in front of me.  I didn’t see any crashes luckily.  I hate people who want to see the crashes.  While it was raining and the crashes were going down in full force I heard a little kid cry out, “Crash, Crash, Crash!!!” as we went by.  Crits are stupid.  We spend hours and hours training hard and preparing ourselves so we can come to some 60 minute crit and break our collarbone and spend the next two months in a sling?—just so a bunch of idiots who don’t even care about bike racing can watch us crash and laugh.  People like to see human pain and suffering.  Just think about all the violence we love watching on TV and in movies.  Crits, unless they’re safe ones with a big hard hill that strings things out and keeps everyone in check, are NOT good for the sport.  If we want suburban or downtown racing, do what they do in Belgium and get a 5K course and make it a Kermes.  That’s real racing.  And it’s not a crash-fest either.

I actually enjoyed the crit, despite the fear of crashing.  After-all, it was fun and exciting.  When you really think about the bike race you just did, despite how much it hurt or how crushed your spirit is, you have to admit that it was more fun than 99% of anything else you ever do.

Anyways, now that I’m done with my little rant on dangerous crit courses (I’m mainly made because I just want more road races), I ended up a too far back to even think about contesting the sprint with two to go.  That’s not entirely true.  If I had wanted it badly enough I could have gotten to the front and in the process crashed a few guys out or nearly crashed them out, but I didn’t want it that badly.  Maybe in a few weeks at Tulsa Tough I’ll want it that badly, but not here.  So I finished in the top 20 somewhere and made the same time as the winner.  Unfortunately I was the only one on our team to finish in this group and they gave everyone behind time gaps.  This meant that I was now ahead of Lang on GC.  He’d beaten me by 0.1 seconds in the TT.

For dinner we ate a crappy Mexican place next to the crit course.  I say crappy because this was the one and only time EVER that I’ve sent something back to the cook.  I ordered nachos, as did Lang, and out came a plate full of cheese.  Somewhere underneath lay the chips, but I never found them.  There was also supposed to be meat on them, though I couldn’t find that either.  I had assumed they’d come with pico de gallo, lettuce, beans, you know–regular nacho type ingredients, but the only thing on there was a pound and a half of melted cheese and a few chips.

Later that night when Lang and I drove to his Mom’s house to stay the night, I had a real dinner.  Lang’s mom had made chili and a huge batch of jalapeno corn bread.  It was delicious.  Especially with honey and butter.  I fueled up, knowing that I’d be spending quite a bit of time in the wind the next day.

Sunday Stage 3:  Goals for the day: win.  Win everything.  The GC and the stage.  To win the GC we’d have to put time into the Team Exergy juggernaut, which was actually only three guys.  Quinn, Kai, and Sam, were first, second, and third on GC.  The GC was very close, with the TT as the only major decisive stage.  I was down by a minute, so I’d have to be off the front in a small breakaway if I was going to think about GC glory.  Realistically, our best GC guy was still Chris, who was only down by 10 seconds or so but if he was going to move up much he’d have to drop all the Exergy guys from the group which was not likely.  A break was the only way to win today, and usually the overall winner wins from a breakaway like Sam did last year.  This post is getting long so I’m going to try to keep it down to a minimum.

The course was 86 miles.  Six laps of a fairly flat course save for one 7-minute undulating climb and then long, mainly false flat descent.  I told everyone before the race that I wasn’t going to attack right from the gun, which I need to stop doing, and I didn’t.  I attacked before the gun while the race was still neutral.  I wasn’t aware of how long the race was supposed to be neutralized–which was well past the corner I had thought.  My angry waves at the lead car didn’t make the neutralization end any sooner either, it just confused the driver and everyone back in the field.

Steve got away on the first lap but was caught part way up the climb.  The first time up the climb was hard.  The field split into a bunch of little groups with only 20 or so of us in the front group.  I attacked on the downhill as soon as my legs allowed, just like everyone else in that group did, but nothing stuck and the whole field came back together.

The second time up the hill was a lot easier.  I attacked at the top where it gets real steep and got a little group with Chris in it to pull through a couple times on the descent, but only temporarily.  The field caught us and the same thing happened on the downhill with everyone attacking and going nowhere.

On the flats, though, a bunch of little breaks dangling up the road somehow merged together to form a large group of 20.  Exergy was put under pressure here as Kai was their only guy in it.  Sam pulled it back.

Third time up the climb.  I can’t remember.  I don’t think it was that bad or that memorable.  I can’t really remember if it was memorable now that I try to remember.

I attacked later on the downhill and got away!  To my delight, one guy followed and we worked fairly hard, but not that hard, until the top of the climb.  The guy, an H&R Block rider, didn’t seem fully committed and his pulls felt a bit weak, though we needed another guy working with us if it were to succeed anyways.  We were caught a little after a lap off the front as four riders came up to us, going hard.  The field was right behind them.  I latched on over a little riser as my breakmate went backwards.  I pulled through once but we were pretty much caught a few hundred meters later.  I got onto the wheel of the next guy who attacked from the field and then attacked him as he sat up, thinking it was hopeless as the field pulled up right behind us.  It wasn’t hopeless, for my attack worked and I was gone once again.  Solo.  But not for long luckily.  A new H&R Block Canadian bridged up to me a kilometer later and he was fresh, ready to smash the pedals.  I sat on him a bit more than I normally would, letting him know I had just been off the front for a full lap when he asked me if I wasn’t feeling good, eh.  I let him pull all the way up the hill, and then we were caught.  Not by the pack though, by three other guys including Chris that had likely attacked right at the top of the hill.  We worked together and my legs were getting pretty toasted, but we didn’t have enough cohesion to stay away and we got caught basically right where the field caught me the first time.

The last half lap it was ALL ABOARD THE SAM JOHNSON EXPRESS!!!!  All aboard, get your tickets out!!!  The train’s leavin the station at 12 sharp!! ALL ABOARD!!!  Turns out Sam had been the main guy chasing my breakaways down.  SJ vs KP.  Master vs the protege.  Sam pulled all the way to the hill as everyone decided to just rest up and conserve for the final time up the climb, where the field finally went to bits.  I held on for a long time but mentally cracked right at the last riser before the feed zone at the top.  Sometimes if you’ve been on the front all day or off the front in breakaways all day you get the mentality of “ahh screw it.  I did my part already.  I’m done.”  Spending time in the wind is sometimes as equally mentally draining as it is physically draining, sort of.  I got this mentality with a few hundred meters of climbing to go.  Actually I had it at the base of the climb but managed to somehow hold on till 200 meters to go.  I sat up, deciding it wasn’t possible, let a gap open as I saw that I was the last guy in the group, immediately regretted it and started hammering to catch back on as the slope turned into the double digits.  In hindsight, I know I could have dug just a fraction deeper and made it if I had stayed mentally strong, but instead I spent the last miles of the race chasing with a small group and finished 25th, 24th overall GC.  Ian won though so my time off the front was not for nothing.  GC stayed pretty much the same at the very top, but Chris did move up to 4th and Ian to 6th.  Steve moved up to 10th GC and Lang had a terrible mechanical part way through the race and spent most of it chasing and finished off the back.  I was happy for the team’s success but disappointed in my own result.  Pretty much like most of the season so far.  Things will change though.  My good legs are coming…soon.  It’s just a matter of lining them up with the right mindset and then it’s crushing time.

Some photos from Wheels In Focus.

Crit

Me and my giant helmet riding up the hill in break #1.

The day started like any other. I woke up nauseously hungry from my calorie-restricted diet of fruit salads and chicken broth soup, I stepped on the scale, thought about all the climbing at Mt. Hood and Cascade Classic and every other NRC race of the year…thought about not eating breakfast, started making breakfast anyways, chased Thomas around the yard trying to get a dead bird out of his mouth…!!?? Thomas had caught another animal! He comes through with a double victory this week! The victim this time was an unsuspecting quail, its short life ending in Thomas’ slobbery mouth, bones crunched and lungs collapsed in an agonizing spasm of pain and suffering as Thomas cruelly, and without remorse, bloodied his mouth with warm quail meat. This would be my goal for the day too.

Thomas’ kill gave me motivation to bring that type of bone-crunching furry to the OBRA state champs that afternoon. I angrily and savagely devoured two pancakes with fruit. And I crushed a cup of coffee. And furiously drank a couple liters of water. A small breakfast by my normal standards, but hey, I have to become a “light and nimble” bone crushing beast, not a gigantic mammoth-like bone crushing beast. I need to be like the Kangaroo mouse, agile feather weights capable of great feats of strength. Kangaroo mice are known to take down much larger prey than their own body size. The average Kangaroo mouse is eight ounces but regularly kills prey such as large lizards, snakes, weasels, juvenile emu, and white foxes (all that prey being up to 15 pounds!) Pretty amazing and almost hard to believe…but that’s nature for you. (Another little-known fact about Kangaroo mice is that they never drink water. They get all their needed fluids from their prey’s blood).

My mom, brother, and I drove down to Silverton for the race with me envisioning myself as a great white Kangaroo mouse named Thomas T, blood-thirsty for lizard meat and quail liver. The previous day I had gone on my first ride in five (FIVE!!) days. After Joe Martin I took four full days off the bike and on Friday I finally broke the hiatus with a short ride. My legs felt stiff but strong. I was easily pushing decent watts and had to hold back. It was amazing that I felt so good. The first time in months that I’ve felt somewhat fresh. I’m going to start incorporating this rest thing in my training more often.

After Friday’s good sensations I knew I would have some energy to burn off. And since the race was relatively short at 70 miles I decided to make things hard from the start–which I would have done anyways no matter what. The course featured four rolling laps with 6,000 feet of climbing in total. A strong tailwind on one straight of the course and a strong headwind on the other. Unfortunately there was no cross wind since the ends of the rectangular course were short, but I knew it would be an attritious race anyways.

I got away very easily on the first tailwind climb with Team Veloce’s Michael Palmer. I was amazed the pack let me get up the road like that. Maybe they were planning on letting me wear myself out. I wasn’t sure if that’s what their plan was, but I knew they’d be making a terrible mistake if they gave me too much time so I punched it and accidentally dropped my break-mate a half mile later when we got to the short crosswind section at the top of the climb. Whateves. The course turned a corner and I was blasted in the face with wind. I tucked into a tight ball as tight and small as a Kennett can get and continued to drive it by myself for a good 15 minutes or so until I saw two guys finally start to come across. I sat up and let them catch me, then drove it immediately when they got on my wheel. One guy was immediately dropped and went back to the pack for some R&R. It was going to be a hard race after all and off the front in the wind was no place for those who weren’t content with going all in.

The other guy who stuck with me (a Team Oregon rider named Stephen Bedford) helped drill it from there on out. He was taking some big pulls and sprinting up the small risers while we stuck it to the field. I was impressed with how strongly he road…those first 30 minutes. I knew he would crack pretty soon after we finished that first lap as he began coming off my wheel on the longer tailwind climb when we started the second lap. By now we had two minutes, which wasn’t even close to enough for me to attempt it solo for the next three laps. I coaxed Bedford on, trying to get our gap up to four or five minutes before I either dropped him or let him sit on. Another seldom-known attribute of the Kangaroo mouse is its ability to lure its prey in with its coaxing pure. The mouse actually purrs like a friendly cat, brain-washing its prey directly into its skeleton-filled den.

Now I don’t want to screw anyone over in a local race (though I’d have no problem doing it in an NRC because all those guys would do the same to me) so my plan was to keep drilling it with Bedford until our gap was four or five minutes, let Team Oregon back in the pack keep the peloton in check and smother any bridging moves, and then ride tempo to the end and let Bedford keep on my wheel for a podium placing. Either that or attack with one lap to go.

This all went to shit as we came across the finish line a second time to start the third lap. By now our gap was 3:50. I looked behind me to see how Bedford was doing while we went up the tailwind climb and saw I had a large gap. My instincts kicked in as I saw weakness and I punched it. Damn it. This was a dumb move. I knew it. I slowed down a second. My instincts kicked in again and I continued to turn the screws the rest of the way up the climb. Damn it stop it Kennett you idiot!!! I had a sure thing just a minute ago and now I was sabotaging the whole plan because of a pair of itchy legs!

The Kangaroo mouse is known for its quick thinking and decision-making. Its rationale, though, can sometimes become befuddled by the mud and blood of battle. A National Geographic episode I saw last week shows a Kangaroo mouse attacking a large snake in the Sahari desert. The snake is badly wounded and the Kangaroo mouse circles it, moving quickly and precisely, coming in with slashing fangs every half second. The snake can’t even react in time to get in ONE self-preserving strike, not that it would matter, since the Kangaroo mouse has developed an antibody to fight this particular type of snake venom. Anyways, the snake is about to die when the Kangaroo mouse, now tired from the fight, gets a whiff of another prey animal nearby. Without thinking it bounds away in a full sprint and happens upon a large desert tortoise, easily 120 or more pounds. The mouse, which has tasted blood, attacks the tortoise without even thinking about what it’s doing, slashing at the hard shell with its claws, jump- kicking the sturdy legs (kangaroo-style), and climbing up on the back of the tortoise to gnaw on the top of the tortoise’s head. The tortoise hardly notices the mouse is there for 20 minutes and slowly plods on in search of tortoise food–which I’m pretty sure is just smaller tortoises. Finally, the tortoise realizes the mouse is there and sucks its head and limbs into its shell in fright. The tiny mouse furiously scratches and bangs its head on the tortoise shell for the next 18 hours until it dies of exhaustion, only managing to slightly dent the thick tortoise shell in a few places.

I heard later that Team Oregon had wisely been setting tempo on the front, making sure our gap didn’t get out of control in case this exact scenario played out. My lead over Bedford quickly grew and within a few more miles he was no longer in sight. I slowed down to a more manageable pace, tucking on the descents and going hard tempo everywhere else. I finished the third lap. Only 18 miles to go. I had no clue how big my lead was. No one told me for miles so I had just been riding at what I felt like I could do and not use up all my glycogen reserves before the last lap. I was out of food. I had brought two bars, two bottles of Hammer Perpetuem, and one flask of gel. That adds up to a staggering 1500 calories–staggeringly low that is. Normally I’d bring along another thousand calories of bars and gel even for this short of a race. I like to end the race with extra food in my pockets, and usually do. Just knowing you have more food to eat if you need it helps. When you run out of food you start thinking about it…about how screwed you are and soon you start feeling the beginnings of imaginary bonks. I never bonked today, but my energy went way down on that last lap. I didn’t bring much food because of my wight-loss plan for Hood. Plus 1500 calories would have been plenty if I hadn’t been off the front all day. One of the stages of Joe Martin last week was 110 miles and I only ate 1500 calories, but I spent very little time in the wind.

Anyways, I’ll wrap things up here. On the longer tailwind climb I finally got a report on my time gap and it was all the way down to 1:28 on three chasers. I kept going hard until they came into sight with about 13 miles to go. I pondered my options. Let them catch me and sit on or keep the gap the same and hope they start playing cat and mouse with each other. I looked down at my WWMTD bracelet (What Would Mark Twight Do?) and decided to keep going hard by myself in the headwind.

I finally gave in and sat up when I saw they were just letting me dangle. Time to be smart now since I no longer had the legs to ride dumb. I was caught with precisely I don’t really know how many miles. In the first couple miles of the race I had torn my wheel speed sensor off my front fork since it had come loose and was getting caught in my front spokes. I am SICK of that damn ancient technology and I’m finally going to bight the bullet and get a more up to date bike computer.

I was caught with about 10K to go and sat on. The chase group contained Scott Gray (Team Oregon), Rob English (Hutche’s) and Brad Winn (Team S&M). They rotated through for a couple miles until Rob launched a strong move on a steep riser with three miles to go. I had been pretty confident in my ability to win the uphill sprint from that group until that moment. My legs were gone. Gray and I got onto Rob’s wheel at the top OK, but I knew I might be screwed for the sprint coming in a few miles. Brad was dropped during the attack and it was now just the three of us, with me still sitting on for the next couple miles. Rob and Scott slowed up as we approached the final few kilometers. In hindsight I should have attacked on the first riser with 1200 meters to go, but I figured they’d cover the move and I’d have even less left for the sprint. The final short, steep riser approached as Scott lead into it with Rob next and me third. With 200 meters to go Scott punched it and opened a gap on Rob and I. I came around Rob but knew I was doomed for 2nd. There was no way I was catching up to Scott at that point. Normally that’s the type of finish that suits me perfectly, but not today for I had already burned a full book of matches. Lesson learned? Probably not.

After the race I ate some food and immediately felt better (no shit). In fact I was feeling good enough to ride home. Galen Mitterman and I set out in the deteriorating weather for Keizer, where he was staying, then I continued on by myself to Sherwood, ending a fun 130-mile day. One of my favorite parts about local Oregon racing is getting to catch up with everyone before and after the race and it was fun seeing everyone again. Two more days off the bike before I can start training again…here we go.

Feed from my brother.

Check out Oregon Cycling Action for race photos.

As some of you may know, a rider in the Giro d’Italia died on stage three this week. His name was Wouter Weylandt and he was just a year older than me.

I didn’t feel that much sorrow when 9/11 happened. I didn’t personally know anyone that died there. And I don’t really feel anything tonight after 5,500 people in Africa died of HIV/AIDS yesterday (the daily average by the way). But strangely I did feel something when I heard about Wouter’s death and as I watched part of stage four when the pack rode slowly to the finish in mourning, no racing. A single person’s death can mean more sometimes because it’s not a statistic, but I don’t think that was the reason. I guess I don’t really have that much in common with the 9/11 or HIV victims. I do have a lot in common with Wouter and everything that he was working towards that was suddenly gone.

The people I felt most sorry for were Wouter’s teammates. I can hardly imagine how I’d feel if one of my teammates were killed in a race, or if I were killed and my teammates had to deal with that. I have no idea how I’d react. We spend so much time together during the season; they’re really some of my closest friends. And of course I felt terrible for Wouter’s family. I don’t think a family can ever get over a death as unexpected and sudden as that. People may say or think, “at least he died doing what he loved.” And they’d be correct. Although, at the time it’s hard to see that if you’re the bike racer. As cyclists, we spend most of our time looking to the future, looking around the bend for the next, bigger, better thing to happen. Looking for a downhill damn it! A new team, a win, a category upgrade, the next season when “everything will be different and better.” But usually there is no downhill around the bend, just more climbing.

It’s very hard to appreciate the moment in this sport. When you’re out on a long, cold five-hour training ride by yourself it’s too boring and miserable to soak it in. When you’re attacking your breakaway at mile three you’re too excited. When you’re brought back by the peloton after being caught and you’re suffering up a hard climb going backwards through the cars you’re in waaaaay too much pain. When you’re back home going over the race in your head for hours on end you’re too depressed. And when you’re back out training the following week you’re too excited again, looking forward to that next race where you’ll inevitably spend the entire time looking forward to the finish line. The future is always on our minds. Maybe it is for everyone and it’s a human flaw, not just a bike racer’s. Although it’s cliché I’ll say it anyways: you have to appreciate the moment, because like for Wouter, the future may never come.

We train month after month, year after year in hope of one or two great performances.  Long dry spells  between victories and even longer spells of bad fitness and bad luck paint the dreary picture that is the life of a pro/aspiring pro cyclist.  Will it ever come?  Will the cycling gods ever look upon me and grant me the legs and the brains to have that breakthrough performance?  Will all the work be worth it when some day I get to stand atop the podium, or is it the journey that’s important?  Is the summit the victory or is the real triumph overcoming and embracing the pain and drudgery while climbing the mountain side?

For Thomas T. Tabernackle Peterson III, no metaphorical questions plague his mind today, for he has tasted the sweet, gamey meat of victory.  Today he stands tall on the mountain top.  After months of hard labor, barking at empty trees, chasing phantom squirrels in the wood pile, and occasionally even chasing real live squirrels across the yard into the blackberry bushes, Thomas T. has found GLORY!!  HEAR YE, HEAR YE, Thomas T got one!!!  Praise the Lord Thomas T nabbed a squirrel!  The drought is over.  After 16 long months, a squirrel victory has once again been brought to the Peterson household.  Oh joyous day!  By the gods of zircon, let there be much celebration and much merriment!

The face of a champion.

Thomas took a few victory laps around the house to celebrate his catch and give praise to the squirrel gods.

That’s a fine looking specimen, Thomas.  A fine looking specimen indeed.  It will go nicely, stuffed and mounted, over the mantelpiece.

OK, Thomas that’s enough parading around.  You’ve been doing celebratory hot laps for 35 minutes now.  It’s time to get your recovery food in and elevate those legs for tomorrow’s stage. Rolling around the parking lot looking for team directors to talk to isn’t going to get you on a pro team. You can let your results speak for themselves today.

Post-squirrel poop. Possibly the first ever caught on camera. Victory laps now up to 45 minutes and counting and I still haven’t caught him yet to throw away the disease-infested trophy.

“Stay, Thomas. Staaaaay…”

A Recoverite dog bone distracted him temporarily and I chucked the squirrel in the blackberry bushes for a gopher to eat.

Well done, Sir. Well done. Go put those feet up and update your Twitter.