Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Well ya'll, were in Tennessee now...

Thursday, April 20, 2006
Chattanooga, TN

Here’s the lowdown on the latest. I’m officially sick (courtesy of one JV). It’s been a bit of a fight. Yesterday was similar to the first stage of last year. One guy went away all day, & the peloton rode at ~20 miles an hour all day until it was chased down prior to entering the circuit. The circuit was pretty bad, it had two little kickers. Basically you take a hard right and hit this fairly moderate uphill that’s big-ringable, you come over the top and descend 200 meters quickly and take a hard right into a roller then into a super steep 100 meter hill. Then you get back onto the flats and someone tries to set a pace at the front so the dropped guys don’t get back on. Unfortunately, that’s the crappy part. Every time it came back together on the flats and they swarmed the ones who didn’t get dropped. When you get to the hill the next time around you’ve gotta pass ‘em all over again. So there was relatively no selection.
Today was selective. It was the ~20 mile tt. I felt good for the first third and the last third. In the middle my legs fell asleep, so it was kinda rough. I got up the hill and started riding the rolling ridge part and they fell asleep!?! Anyway, that was like 10 K, then there was a long fast downhill where it was too fast to peddle anyway & I managed to reinvigorate the circulation and caught one of the guys that passed me (2 Andrew Bajadali & a guy from Phonak), then in the last 5k Tom Danielson came by me. I think that means I lost 6 minutes to him. That sucks. What sucks more is that they gave me a 45 second penalty for "drafting." Hmmm,