intervals, chainrings, and mexican pacelines

an older draft that i never finished or posted. looking forward to harvest being over to get back to this kind of schedule. it's been a week full of amazing rides. i had two days of awesome interval training monday and wednesday. monday was a two mile sprint course with 2 miles back recovery and i felt great. I ended up with the best time of the night though most of my competition wasnt there that night. 2:47 was the time to beat. and that was my 6th run at it. we'll see if i can gain anything on that next week. the next set of intervals was on wednesday and it was hill repeats a 12% gradient hill that is .7 miles long with about 1.5 miles recovery in a loop back to the bottom. my best time there was 3:06 but i was pretty shot from mondays intervals. one of the runs at it we did it in our hardest gear and that was a pretty fun SLOW run at it. but i forgot to set my timer but i think we added about a minute. i was with a teammate coming down the hill after our last climb when we heard two motorcycles coming up behind us. now this hill you can reach 40mph very quickly so he gave me a nod to say lets see how long we can hold them off. obviously at 40 mph they caught us quick but they knew we were racing them and gave us a holler as they went past. I'm pretty sure we gave them a good run for their money ;) once we got back to the cars we told everyone who was back already about how we just smoked a violent biker gang in a race.

in both interval sets i was CONSTANTLY looking for a harder gear. I have to get a smaller cog or a bigger chainring because im just maxing out too early. a teammate gave me a pretty decent program that lets you see the effects of different setups so i plan to mess with that a bit this weekend.

Thursday night is my epic night ride night
but this thursday i was supposed to be sitting up and hanging with the slower group trying to rest up for sundays time trial. yah we'll see how that went its kind of a somewhat all level ride BUT there is a very fast group that breaks off the front and destroys/ self destructs on two little climbs then drops into a wicked paceline for a 10 mile segment of some (reverse false flats) slight downhill. the ride started off quick and i get dropped to some bike prep timing issues had to do about a mile sprint out of the gates to catch them from the get go. then i was sitting at the back of the pack for about two minutes when i saw some guys start to make a move off the front. so i had to sprint to the front past about twenty riders to try to get the guys back wheel. well one violent crank was too much for my already dilapidated cleats resulting in my foot popping out my cranks spinning and my chain get wrapped in a mess that took me WAY too long to free and included two dismounts!! so again i was chasing this time for about 5 miles as the pace had increased. did i mention i was supposed to be sandbagging this ride. so i catch up and on the first hill force myself not to attack. i just sit up and let the climbers do their thing constantly thinking about sundays race and forcing myself to relax knowing there was a re-grouping point on the back end of the hill............... *i just found this in my drafts and realized i started typing it months ago but never posted it oops. trust me the story ended amazingly.