Author: kennettron

This has been my second day of recovery, both of which have consisted of easy rides in the morning and easy rides in the afternoon.  After the race, yesterday, my legs were feeling a bit tuckered out.  But now they feel quite nice, and I’m ready for a hard day tomorrow and the day after as well. 

The food is beginning to drive me a bit nuts.  Gilad has Tony and I on a very high fat diet.  30% or more of our calories comes from fat—healthy fat like peanut butter, nuts, olive oil, lard, Crisco, bacon, McDonald’s and such.  But here, the coaches don’t believe in the benefits of fat.  Hence the very boring and tiring menu of plain bleached pasta, tuna, eggs, vegetables, potatoes and soup constructed of all of the above.  To compliment this diet, all of us here are constantly wolfing down bread and jam—the Costco tub of peanut butter that Tony brought (originally off limits to the Israelis because if its high fat content) has been licked clean within three days.  These guys LOVE peanut butter.

Tony and I have also been eating Snickers bars and Peanut M&M’s in our vain search for fat calories.  Our supply is running low, and they are way to expensive to buy over here.  Mom, I need a shipment of food!!!! 

Tomorrow should be fun and hard, and I am getting pumped for the next race on Sunday.  This time I’m getting top 5.  All four of these paragraphs started with and were brought to you by the letter “T.”

The race….was…hard.  I am tired.

In Belgium there are 3 categories of racers.  “Cadets” are ages 15 and 16.  Juniors are 17 to 18.  And then everyone else races together.  Everyone else is very fast.  There are no cat 5’s or 4’s or 3’s.  Everyone is fast.  

We got to the race course with plenty of time to sign in and warm up.  There were 9 officials in the sign-in building.  9!!!! That’s a lot of officials!  

Our team of six guys, including Tony, Gal, Eliad, Nizan, Shapi, and myself, lined up at the very front of the field under a stormy sky.  It began to rain.  Hard.  Tony and I wanted to wear long sleeve jerseys, but the Israeli’s knew better.  Short sleeves would be fine, even though it was cold and rainy.  The race was going to be HARD.  

Without any warning whatsoever, the announcer said “go” or something in Flemish and we and the other 130 riders took off.  I didn’t even have one foot clipped in.  But it didn’t matter, there would be plenty of time to get to the front.  The race was 113 kilometers (70 miles)–made up of twenty, 5 kilometer laps situated in a village/city type setting.  The course was up hill one direction, with a couple semi steep climbs and two long low gradient climbs.  The other direction was downhill, with some flat sections.  There were 10 or 11 sharp corners.  

The pace of the race was like a very fast crit.  The contact between the other riders wasn’t too bad.  I got my pedal in a guys spokes once, got pushed into the gutter once, and bumped other riders a handful of times, so that part of the race was pretty comfortable.  My legs and the rest of my body, on the other hand, were not comfortable.  It was pain.  Unimaginable pain.  I can’t even remember what the pain was like because my brain has already blocked the memory from me.

I spent a little while near the front at the beginning, and then a lot of time in the middle, which kept on becoming the back.  130 started, and the officials pulled everyone except the top 20.  I was not in the top 20.  I was one group back, so I probably would have gotten 30th to 40th if they had let me finish.  The way that these races work is that there are a couple lead cars, and a couple follow cars.  The riders between these cars get both lanes of the road, which is sometimes equivalent to half of one American lane’s width.  Once you get dropped form the main group (a car paces you), you get pulled.  I suffered through 18 of 20 freakin laps, and they pulled my group of 15 guys with only 2 laps to go!  But I was almost too tired to care.  Almost.  So I guess I’m somewhat satisfied with how I did.  I would compare the difficulty of the race to something I could relate to, but I don’t think I’ve done a race this fast before.  It definitely didn’t suit my strengths, which are not sprinting out of corners, but if that’s my weakness, then bring it on.  Now I know what to expect, so next time I’m pretty sure I will be able to make the top 20 selection.  That’s enough for now.  Kennett tired.

The weather is turning around.  Today’s morning ride was damp but warm, and the sun finally peaked out from beige Belgium clouds.  Tony and I headed out at 10:00 for intervals.  5×3’ each with 4’ rests.  120 rpm for the first minute, 75 rpm for the second—both at around 330 watts.  The third minute was all out. 

After these we had 10 minutes off, then six 15-second sprints with 45 second rests.  After a logging truck passed, we started the first interval and I managed to jump onto the truck’s draft for a good little ride at 35 mph.  I am starting to feel good about sprinting, at last.  I beat Tony on all the sprints today, which usually doesn’t happen since he’s a beastly sprinter.  Although he says I won only because of the And I maxed out at 1,424 watts for the first time.  For the past couple months, I haven’t even gotten above 1,300.  And I did 1,300 or higher eight times today.  My legs are definitely coming around now; my lungs will follow shortly I hope.  One more ride this afternoon to clear out the lactic acid, and then we have our first race tomorrow.  

Today I ate a lot of food.  I am still writing about today, the 17^th.  Here is a list of the food I ate:

3 bowls of oats

about 6 pieces of bread with jam

1 chicken leg (I caught that rooster)

3 bowls of chicken/potato soup

1 bowl of salad

3 plates of pasta

2 plates of rice

4 pieces of birthday bread cake (one of the guy’s birthday today)

2 hard-boiled eggs

1 large baked potato

maltodextrin on the bike

odds and ends

Looks like I’ll be doing 25 hour weeks, which means a lot of food.

I did another 3 or 4 hours today.  Except this time we were supposed to go on a medium paced “tempo” ride.  Basically, if we go on an “easy” ride, it is a medium ride.  If we go on a “medium” ride, it is a hard ride.  We haven’t yet gone on a “hard” ride. 

The ride consisted of Gal (the head coach who is still a racer), Niazan, and Iliad-both on the national team.  We started with two more guys, but they got dropped about 20 minutes into it.  I was also there.

We were to do 1 hour easy/warm up, 30 minutes of temp, break, 30 minutes of tempo, then finish off with an extra hour or so.  After Niazan attacked on a climb 15 minutes into the ride, it was hammer time.  I countered, and drilled it the rest of the way up.  10 minutes later we got to the next climb, which was much less steep, but a lot longer.  About 20 minutes to the very top.  I set a hard tempo up it, and later got scolded by Gal after he caught back on at the top.  “If that’s your tempo speed, then you should join the guys on the TV!”  But he basically went against his own words about 30 minutes later when we started the first tempo interval.  Before that though, we climbed up a long 4% grade section.  “This is tempo speed,” he said.  My power tap read 330 watts.  “You should be able to hold your tempo speed for all day.”  He means3 hours, not a 7-hour ride.  That pace felt fine, definitely like tempo and within reason of holding “all day.”  But after a fast descent, Gal began to hammer on the flats/rollers.  Niazan and Iliad and I pulled through, all four of us slowly but surely increasing the “tempo.”  450 watts didn’t seem like tempo, but of course I wasn’t going to complain!

With 10 minutes to go, Niazan and Iliad stopped pulling through, which left most of the work to me.  I could tell they were cracking.  Eeeeeexcelent.

We finished on the top of a small climb, took 6 minutes of rest, and started the next interval.  The rain had completely soaked the road by now, so spray was flying everywhere on the descent into a small village.  But it isn’t cold here, just wet.  The rain and spray felt good.

Oh, and by the way—even in these small villages, the drivers race down the roads like orangutans high on bananas injected with banana extract.  We entered the village and zoomed in and out of traffic, bumping bumping bumping over the cobbles and dodging oncoming cars and potholes.  We exited the dangers of the village, but there were still 25 minutes of pain left to be dealt out. 

There is one instance in which one word can be understood in all languages.  That instance is riding, hard.  And that one word is “slow.”  It is gasped, not said, by a pleading rider in the back of the paceline.  The gasp and groan of the word are the same in every language.  The desperation of how it’s said is unmistakable.  And of course, the more desperate it sounds, the harder you will pull.  We were only half way through the interval, and Gal was beginning to tire.  The other two guys grimaced in the back, sucking our wheels.  There was only one option for me to do when I heard the word for “slow,” stuttered in Hebrew from behind.  I slowed down and sat up for a second or two, making it look like I had the intention of slowing down.  Then I steadily ramped up the pace again, only this time harder.

Don’t get me wrong, the ride was NOT easy for me.  I was suffering just as much as everyone else.  I was just suffering at the front, which is always a better place to suffer.  My legs were full of acid after the first 30 minutes, plus all the ego climbing during our 1 hour warm up.  But God damn it!! I didn’t travel all the way to Belgium to take a stroll through the daisy fields!  *note,* there are no daisy fields.  I was just making a point.

We finished the interval in a pool of acid, and began the easy part of the ride.  Not.

We rode into a village and immediately headed for another Belgian Wall.  These Belgian Walls are everywhere here.  It’s as if Belgian construction crews roamed the country looking for places to build roads.  And they would come upon a cliff and say to each other, “hey, that looks like a swell spot for a road.”  “Wait wait wait, Hold on now, let’s not be rash,” one of them would say.  “Lets first make sure it’s steep enough so that a bicyclist might tip over backwards if they attempted ride up it.”  “Ahh, good point.  I almost forgot the bike tip test.  Release the hounds!!!”  The hounds have nothing to do with what I was just talking about.  Nor do they have anything to do with anything.  I just wanted to write it.  So I’ll do it again.  Release the hounds!!! That was satisfying.

Anyways, the Belgian Walls: they aren’t as pleasant as Belgian Waffles, which I assume are just “waffles” here.

They’re all 3 to 6 minute climbs (going hard) and they always have a gradient of 20% or more at one point or another.  And we always race up them.  We may start out nice and slow at the bottom section, but 1 minute up and the talking stops, and the pain begins.  Each time up one of these, I secretly thank Gilad for finding Nectar Way.  We did a couple wall climbs during the ride today, including that Liege-Bastogne-Liege climb again.  There is bold white writing covering the climb, with names of famous riders.  Someone named “Phil” has a giant fan club because his name is slathered all the way up the wall.  And I stand corrected; the climb maxes out at 21% not 18%.  

After the wall climbs, we each got a mini Belgian Coke back in a village and rode home.  Then feasted.  

17th

I woke up this morning to a rooster cawing at around 5AM.  It is still cawing now, at 12:30.  I think it’s time we ate some chicken.

Speaking of chicken, today is the first time we’re having it.  For lunch.  Chicken soup, rice, pasta, bread, salad, honey and jam, and cheese.  Everyone here is counting down the minutes until 1:00.  Lunch time.  Breakfast is at 8:00, lunch is at 1:00, Dinner is at 7:00 and we go to sleep at 10:00.  The smell of the food cooking right now is distracting me from writing about anything other than food. 

Yesterday I rode for two hours in the morning with a group of 6 guys.  It was supposed to be an easy ride, and except for one little duel up that famous climb in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, it was easy.  One other guy, Idan, and I slowly increased the pace the second time up the climb, which averages 10% and maxes out at 18%.  The last 300 meters ended in a sprint.

We rode back home, not beating the rain, and arrived just in time for lunch—soaking wet.  After ping-pong and some relaxing, I went out again on my second ride.  This time I went with Oan and the “caveman” Meroit.  (I have no idea how to spell any of these names).  We went up a hill hard and dropped Oan.  A few minutes later I began to drop Meroit, so I slowed down a bit.  Just enough to let him hang on, forcing him to suffer.

We stopped later for some chocolate, which is off limits to the riders here, by order of the coaches, Gal and Ilan.  So if you run into them, don’t let them know.

The sugar running in our veins forced us to amp up the pace, and we hammered it down some hills for the next 20 minutes. 

Once we got back into town, the two guys made another attempt at a chocolate run, but had to abort when we ran into another group of guys out on their ride.  We joined with them, and went hard up another steep hill.  A lot of the hills here, especially the ones in the villages and towns, are very steep and windy.  They are one-lane roads, riddled with potholes and cracks.  Cars whiz up and down them, taking the blind corners almost as quickly as us.

Our group formed a straight line, panting up the hill as it grew in gradient.  I upped the pace a bit and the line shattered, like the broken glass on the side of the street.  One rider stayed on my wheel as we passed the last of the brick buildings, heading up and above the village into the farm fields. 

At the top, the other rider and I had another sprint.  So far, each climb I have done with a new group, has ended in a sprint.  I’m not sure if it’s my ego or theirs.  Everyone wants to be the fastest over here.  So far I haven’t been beaten, which has surprised all of them. 

The race on Friday is too far away for us, so our first race will now be on Sunday instead.  I have been told that the racing here is very aggressive.  The skills of cornering and sprinting out of corners are necessities.  Belgian kremises sound like a combination of a road race and a crit.  They’re 120km long on 5 to 8km circuits.  I’m looking forward to it.  I could hardly wait for Friday, but waiting until Sunday is torture.  Although it’s probably a good thing for me that we aren’t racing tomorrow.  As you probably guessed, I’m still coughing up stuff but am feeling pretty good.

On our off time, there are a few options.  Ping pong is upstairs.  Bike washing is outside on the patio.  And the living room has the TV, where we either watch the Tour, movies, or play a Play Station rally car racing game that I suck at.  But it is very entertaining to watch everyone play it.  It is a two-person game with a split screen.  The races last for about 5 minutes, and once the first person crosses the finish line, there is a mad scramble for the controllers.  The winner does not play again, and before the second person can even finish their race, the controller is stripped from them as three or four people jump on them and hold them down before they can protest.  The entire room erupts in yelling and shouting as they argue who gets to play next.  The older guys get seniority, but the shoving and wrestling always happens anyways.  Occasionally, a pissed off younger guy who had been waiting for half an hour will get the controller yanked out of his hands before he has a chance to even start.  In revenge, he will then yank out the power cord to the game, which restarts everything and wastes time for everyone else.  He’ll be lucky if he can get out of the room without being tackled after pulling the cord.  Time to go ride.

I got back a few hours ago and now Im posting this.  Sitting out at the same spot with four other guys, hanging out under a small roof thing out of the rain.  Yeah that’s correct.  I said rain.  Again.  It’s been raining again all fucking day!!  Kusemuc! I’ll write about the ride today later.  It was hard.  It was awesome.

I’m stealing the internet from a restaurant right now, and sitting right next to a dumpster with Idan, trying not to be discovered.  

July 16.

On the 14^th I went back to the airport to meet the house “mother and father.”  These are the two people in charge of From there, we rented cars and drove to the village where we are staying in Comblain.  It’s about 30 km from Liege, and 25km from Huy (where stage 9 left from just a few days ago).  The roads here are narrow and very scenic. My first race is this friday, and I am feeling less sick every day.  Yesterday I rode moderately hard for 3 hours by myself before the team showed up.  Then I went on a 1 hour easy ride with some of the team.  There are 25 riders, ages 16 to 22.

We’re staying at a huge brick house that used to be a hotel.  It’s 3 stories high and has about 700 rooms.  The past few days I have been starving because there was no food at the house, and at the hotel all I had to eat was half a loaf of sourdough bread that I brought on the plane.  For some reason, I began to assume that I’d be hungry the entire trip and that in Belgium, no one eats.  And considering the price of food here, that might not be too far from the truth.  A candy bar is $1.50!! But when the team got here yesterday, they began complaining that there was no food in the house.  I sighed a sigh of relief.  Good.  I wasn’t the only one.  That night, after the house mother and father (Gioa and Ada) went shopping, we went through mounds and mounds of pasta.  And this morning we cleared out about 10 boxes of cereal.  And the true training hasn’t even started yet.  Ok, time to go.

I don’t have internet access here everyday, so I’ll be writing things as I go along, and will post them when I do have internet access.  So most things I write, happened a few days earlier.

July 13.

The team got uninvited to the Tour of Liege, which sucks.  But then again, I don’t think I would have done very well in it anyways, seeing that I’m still coughing up stuff.  Because we won’t be doing the race, the rest of the team won’t be showing up to Belgium until the 17^th.  But the two people taking care of the house who will be doing the cooking, food shopping, and all that stuff, will get here on the 14^th.  That means I’m here by myself for a day.

After my flight and getting through customs, I stumbled out into the airport lobby area here in Brussels.  My first obstacle was to find a hotel.  After wandering around for the better part of an hour, I finally made my way outside to the free shuttle area, and took the bus to the cheapest hotel I could find ($59 euros).  Earlier that day, I exchanged $100 for 50 euros.  So 59 euros isn’t that cheap, although the room is tiny.

As quickly as I could, I assembled my bike in the hotel room and put on my cycling stuff.  It was 10:30 AM, but it felt much later.  More like 3AM.  I never fell asleep the other night—the night before I left.  And the sleep I got on the plain was more of just a doze.  So by the time I stepped out of my hotel into the sun ready to explore the streets of Brussels, I hadn’t slept for two days. 

The hotel managers pointed me in the right direction to the city, which was 8 kilometers away, and then I was off.  I spent the next three hours in complete confusion, disoriented from lack of sleep and the strange streets, and completely lost. 

I cruised alongside cars and buses down the narrow streets, dodging opening car doors on the right, and deranged oncoming Belgium drivers on the left.  The city smelled strange.  In the poor areas, my nose detected hints of sewage.  And then I would pass by Middle Eastern food stands and fruit shops and the smell would make me hungry.  But of course, a familiar smell would bring me back to the car-controlled world: the stench of exhaust as a smoggy tailpipe went by. 

The buildings in Brussels are all made out of brick and concrete.  They rise out of the sides of the streets and stretch up four or five stories, creating a canyon.  These buildings would be a full block long; housing apartments were connected with stores.  Small balconies overlooked the packed streets.  Everything was old and decaying, and yet colorful and exciting.

Most of the time I was able to keep up with the speed of traffic, which decided its current speed not based on speed limit signs, but by how fast the car in front of it was going. 

Brussels is filled with round a bouts, which are confusing and dangerous for bikers.  I used my middle finger more than once, although most of the drivers were courteous enough. 

On one occasion, a car almost cut me off in an intersection as I flew through, it honked and put on its breaks as I gave the guy the finger, remembering that the finger here is the peace sign backwards.  He passed me a moment later and honked at me again, then sped off.  I reflected on the situation, trying to figure out why so many cars were pissed off at me on my bike.  Cycling is their main sport, so why were they driving like maniacs?  Was I doing something wrong?  Then it hit me.  I didn’t know what a stop sign looked like.  In fact, I had just been going through every intersection assuming I had the right of way.  There were stoplights, and I had stopped at those, but I never stopped at any other intersection.  I paid more attention at intersections from then on, but I still never saw anything that resembled a stop sign. 

The cobbles here are everything I thought they would be.  They jar your entire body, especially your hands and feet.  I rode on them for a total of two miles probably.  Doing the Paris-Roubaix on them seems insane, and completely awesome.

Although there were some bike lanes in the city, I only saw six or seven other cyclists (most were commuters) during my three hours.  I don’t think people ride in the city because there are way too many cars, all following their own rules of the road.  I did, however, see a group of eight road bikers heading out of the city when I was on the bus leaving the airport. 

By around 12:00 or so, I was getting tired and was ready to head back to the hotel.  I had absolutely no idea where I was or where the hotel was.  So I did what anyone would do in that situation.  I rode around randomly.

I first imagined Brussels to be a medium-sized city, and assumed I would get turned around for a while, but I didn’t think I would get as lost as I did.  Brussels is much bigger than I thought.  It has about 1 million people in it, and there are no street signs or names.  I kept going in circles, coming to the same street fair over and over again.  Traffic was clogged here, and I ended up riding down the middle of the road, in between honking cars and pedestrians.  After the third time accidentally going through there, I decided to try a completely different direction, and headed straight, towards a tunnel.  I went into the tunnel, which was a bad place to be, considering the lack of a shoulder, the dark, and the rapid speed of the passing, honking cars. 

I finally began asking directions, and it turns out a fair amount of people here know English, or at least a little bit.  I, on the other hand, know absolutely no French, German, or Flemish.  Although I was coughing some up on the ride.

To make a long story short, I rode around in circles for a long time, then began following planes overhead, assuming they were leaving the airport.  I asked a fellow road cyclist for directions, and he told me to follow him.  He got me part of the way there, and gave me directions for the rest of the way, although I didn’t really understand what he said.

Amazingly enough, I got to the airport, and shortly after found my hotel by some bizarre string of luck.  I talked to the hotel managers for a bit, then went back to my room and fell asleep to the Tour.  By the way, the Tour is on 3 channels here, and is completely unabridged.  And there are no commercials.  And they show reruns and highlights all day long on almost every channel.  Another cool thing about Belgium is that they play Monopoly with wooden motels, not plastic.  I saw a picture of it on a bus. 

I can’t sleep, so I’m going to do another post.

I went up to Tabor the other day to watch Tony and my brother, Galen, race.  They both did the cat 4 race.

Some of the pictures are a bit blurry.  I’m still learning how to use my camera.

Here they are at the start.

Tony at the front.

Galen in the pack in the UO kit.

Tony, if you lean out on the handlebars any further, you’re going to tip the bike over.

Pain.  Galen’s first cat 4 race.  And his 5th race ever.  He held on for 3 laps.

Tony trying to take out more spectators on the sidewalk (he’s right behind the bump sign).  This was before he careened into a pregnant woman and her two daughters.  Don’t worry, the paramedics got there in time to stop the 8-year old’s internal bleeding.  Post race comment from Tony, “I treat pedestrians as targets.  Small children are worth 1,000 points.  The elderly are worth 1,500.  Double points if you break their hip.”

And last but not least.  Here’s a photo or two of Thomas with Styrofoam taped around his front legs and tail.  He was no pleased with this.  Later in the day, he got back at me by biting me in the groin while I was throwing small apples in the backyard at him and Galen.

Thomas and Mom.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM.  Everything is packed and ready.  My lungs are clearing up nicely, and I feel like I can finally start training hard again.  The next two months will be the hardest racing and training I have done, and I can’t wait.  After being up in Portland for the past week, spending time at home, my taste buds have grown to appreciate foods other than eggs, pasta, and oatmeal–my three key food groups over the past couple years of being a starving cyclist/college student.  The fridge and pantry are always packed to the brim here, with such treats as deli meat, bagels, cereal, and cheese.  It’s back to the norm for the next two months in Belgium.  The Israelis that Tony and I are racing with live on the eggs, pasta, oatmeal diet too.  But for my last dinner, my parents, brother, and I went out for one last family meal at Ixtapa, the local Mexican restaurant that we’ve been to about 289 times.  I’m going to miss Mexican food.  I’ve noticed that every time I travel, I end up craving Mexican food after two or three weeks of being deprived of it’s magical zest.  But enough of food talk for now (if you can’t tell, I’m hungry right now).  It’s time to sleep.

I’m off to Europe!!!!

As a famous Belgian once said: “Hasta la vista, baby.”

I took a visit to the doctor’s office today and found out that my lungs had a litter less mucus in them.  They’re at 7.1 right now, which is almost back to normal.  My doctor also gave me another prescription for some more antibiotics, a stronger kind.  That puts me at 7 (seven) drugs right now.  That’s more than my grandmother takes.

I’m looking at this little set back as a good thing.  Kind of like Lance’s year of cancer.  He got sick, took some time off to let his muscles and body recover from all that hard training, lost a lot of useless upper body mass, and rejuvenated his passion for cycling.  All of these things boosted his performance for the next seven years.  My situation isn’t really any different.  I’m taking time off to let my body recover from 8 months of hard training.  And I’m loosing upper body mass (my arms have actually gotten smaller finally).  My desire to race is higher than ever right now.  Everything is the same, except for the cancer part.  I think these allergies and virus will prove to be the most helpful weapon in my arsenal of helpful weapons.  At the end of it all, Super Kennett will emerge victorious.  Stronger and faster than ever.  My speed will be night and day difference.  Windows 95 vs Windows 98 difference.  Hot Tamales vs Extra Hot Hot Tamales difference.  Actually, no.  I hate the Extra Hot Hot Tamales.  It’ll be Muchas Gracias on Frankiln st. vs Muchas Gracias on 15th st. difference.  Skim milk vs 2% chocolate milk difference.  Trek 1600 vs Cervelo R3 difference.  Hutches vs Life Cycle difference (yeah that’s right Nick).  Using the left arm vs right arm difference.  Plain cheese pizza vs meat lover’s difference.  Hot dog vs. chili dog difference.  Vanilla ice cream vs chocolate ice cream difference.  Mike’s mother vs Tony’s mother difference.  McCain vs Obama difference.  Dirty shamois smell vs a can of peaches difference.  Pickle vs cucumber difference.  Lime Gatorade vs Orange Gatorade difference.  Naked mole rat vs California sea lion difference.  Appalachians vs Himalayans difference.  Amoxicillin vs Clavulanate difference.  I leave on Saturday, so there better be a difference pretty damn soon.