5 a Day + 30 mm = Mucho Speed

Yesterday was an amazing day for bike practice. I went on my second team ride of the whole season, since track has been gobbling up all my Tuesday nights for the past two and a half months. To make a long story short, Rich and I pretty much dominated. To make a long story long, here you go.

I started off from home about five minutes late, but somehow I managed to get to the parking lot a little early. That was a good sign. So just as we roll out, Ed shows up on his TT bike. I'm thinking "great, he just finished warming up. get ready for a thumpin'" but that didn't happen. We rode off down Riverview into a pretty good headwind and turned right onto 303. We started climbing out of the valley, and at first everyone was together. Kurt was at the front, taking a nice pull, but Ed was sitting second wheel. So Kurt pulls off and Ed does his thing, and soon it's just me, Ed, Rich, and Kurt. And then it's me, Ed, and Rich. And then it's me and Ed. So here I am just hanging on and we start to take turns pulling. Oh it hurt. But Ed gets to the top and I get to the top and we're still together. So that was good. And that took me within 2 watts of my 10 minute peak power.

So everybody regroups at the top and off we go down Olde 8. We're about 1/3 into the ride and ed decides it's time for him to go home. OK. Now it's me and Rich going back and forth over the hills and through the woods and all that until we get back onto Riverview. We've passed Ira, heading for the town line. Kurt takes a pull, Ted takes a pull, and Rich goes. I go with him wondering why we're doing this when we're still at least a half-mile from the finish. As it turns out, Rich thought the sign was around the wrong curve, so he gives it everything too early, and I scoot around and finish alone. Not really a town-line sprint, but I'll take it. I ride home for 60 miles in 3:05 and that's the end of that.

I attribute this ride to three things:
1) Hard training (duh)
2) I put on a new 120 mm stem, up from the 90 I used to ride (short stem = uber-quick steering and not enough weight on the front wheel, Shawn says that might be why I was crashing so much). It feels so smooth, like I could ride the white line for miles.
3) Eating the recommended "at least five servings of veggies daily". Any time eating more food makes me go faster, I'm totally down with that.

Anyways, since I've shared all my secrets (eat right and exercise? sounds familiar) I expect to have some stiff competition coming up soon at Mid-Ohio

-Russ