A First-Class Week

What a week. Here's the breakdown by day.

Sunday: Race for Alex, with possibly the largest field I've ever ridden (54 to be exact). Except it wasn't any different from any other race, since I didn't go any further than ten back. I cleared the tracks every lap, much better than last year, when I just rode over them. Here's the breakdown. First lap, everybody's got ants in their pants or something, because they all want to go like 30mph. Nobody even tries to break away, they just ride a 5-man TTT on the front. Second lap everybody comes to their senses and they realize nobody can win after a 20 mile TT effort in the group. So they try a 20 mile TT off the front. Solo. So I tell everybody to let each one go, and they listen. Ten minutes later we just roll up, not really chasing, to the guy who fried himself off the front. So the strong but not too smart guys are taken care of, now I just have to worry about guys who are saving their energy. Lap three was pretty bad for me. A guy went off the front, and I thought he was somebody else. When I looked around to make sure he was ok to let dangle, it turns out the guy who I thought just went off the front was sitting behind me and the guy up the road was his teammate, who could actually stick it out solo. So off I go, trying to bridge, and I get away. But I don't have enough to make it all the way across. I hang out for three or four minutes but I know I'm wasting myself, so I let the pack get me. Doug keeps things moving and eventually we catch the other guy. Lap four and five I sit in, trying to recover some for the sprint. Lap five I float back a little too much, and Rich brings me back up to third wheel going through the last corner. I get in the line, but the two guys in front of me decide to pull off, so I'm left in the wind. We're real close to the 200m, so I thought I ought to just go for it instaed of pulling off. So I sprint too early and still end up sixth. I feel pretty good about that considering all the work I did in the race. And it was worth $55. Sweet!!!

Monday: Ok, so nothing really happened Monday biking-wise, but it was still an amazing day. I'm in AP Chem right now (well, not anymore, school ended today) and since we took the AP test in the middle of May, we don't have anything to do. So today, we made fun stuff with chemicals. Like smoke bombs and contact explosives. All in a closed, supervised, scientific environment of course, but it was still crazy fun.

Tuesday: One-hour rain ride. I'm trying to get used to riding in the rain a little more ever since I really sucked it up at RATL 3. So the ride went pretty well, and then I cleaned my bike, which is really relaxing for me for some reason.

Wednesday: Another 20 minute set of 30-30's, just like last week. And, just like last week, I raised my 20 minute peak power, which I use as my LT power. So far it's up 3% since the last time I did a power test. I think I could get at least another ten watts if I did a straight TT, well rested and no intervals. After my 30-30's, I did another 20 minutes at z4 and averaged the same as my LT power from the last test. It didn't hurt nearly as much as I remember, even after 20 minutes of intervals.

Thursday (Today): Last day of school. We got out at 10:06 and went across the street for the end-of-the-year Band Bowl. After about ten minutes The Man decided to stick it to us and said we had go further away from the school. I'm not really sure he can actually do that, we weren't on school grounds or anything, but we left anyways. The next closest place to play was the Bath Community Center, four miles away, so we went there. I had my bike, everybody else went by car. I got there while everyone was still getting out of the second car, no headstart except for the time it took for everybody to pile in. This just reaffirms my belief in bikes as the ultimate commuter vehicles, and hopefully riding to band camp every day this summer will win me some converts.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll get an update in after Mill Creek on Sunday.

-Russ