A Salted Ham

Spring is finally here in CNY, and is scheduled to last for the next couple days, to be immediately followed by summer heat. So goes the usual spring around here. Anyway, with the weather breaking, I'm back to riding. Two days in a row now. Whew.

Tuesday I took the TT bike out to the "Mucklands" north toward Oneida Lake. If you want flat around here, that's where you go. The roads are long, straight, and flat. A 25 foot climb out there feels like a monster. I went pretty hard for a bit over an hour and a half and had lots of fun. It's simply fun to go fast, and that bike feels fast. On the way home, I twice spotted a rider up the road. I eased off a little to rest the legs a bit and to time my passing them to occur on a grade where I could really get up a lot of speed. Then I ripped past them, smiling and nodding hello and trying to look cool and relaxed, but in reality with my legs burning from dropping 400W into the cranks until I was far enough past them that my dropping speed wouldn't be so noticeable. We've all done it before, right? As Drew has said, "The best races are the ones where the other person doesn't know they're racing."

Wednesday night brought a weekly club ride. The course followed this coming weekend's race course for a little preview. It was a tough ride. I love riding with the club. If you want to kill yourself, you can get to the front and push the pace. If you need a rest, you just sit in the pack. We made the sharp turn onto Oak Hill, the main climb on the course, and several people launched themselves up the road. I just shifted down to a gear I could spin and tried to stick the wattage at 325. After about a minute, all but one of those who had surged ahead were heading backwards. The main part of the hill took me nearly nine minutes at an average of 303 watts. Saturday, I'll get to do it twice during the race. Yup, it's going to hurt.

At the top, we regrouped a bit, but then a small group rolled away when I wasn't paying attention, then started turning up the speed. It took me about a minute of max effort to bridge up to them, and I just barely made it. I had that amazing sensation of deep ache way down in the body of the quads that you get when you push really far, dig really deep; when you can somehow push past the burn and still you can get your legs to put out the power even though they're cooked. Awesome feeling.

I chatted with the guy I'd chased all the way up the climb. He said it was his second group ride. "You mean, with this group?" I asked. "No, second group ride ever. I just started riding after an elbow injury sidelined my rock climbing."

Sigh. One more brand new guy who's going to be faster than I am in about a week. It's great to see people new to the sport, and fun to watch them as their excitement about it grows. It would be nice though, if for just one year, those fast beginners would stay out for the season and let me win a race or two.

Anyway, today my TT position training and the efforts last night have left my legs sore, especially my hammies which feel particularly assaulted. (Sorry about the title.) I was going to race at the training circuit tonight, but I have instead decided to go home and plant strawberries. Actually, to replant strawberries.

My lovely wife, who has taken to the homeownership thing with unparalleled enthusiasm, spent hours last night in the garden weeding, digging up about thirty healthy strawberry plants. Along with them came lots of dandelions and other actual weeds too. A little voice in the back of her head made her take a sample to work today to show a coworker who knows about such things. She took one look and said, "Oh, those are strawberries."

Fortunately, Sue had dug them up with roots still intact (man, is she ever serious about weeding!) and put everything into a big paper sack. So they've been out of the sun today and we're hoping that they're salvageable. Sue feels bad, I feel bad that she feels bad, but I have to say it's also pretty damn funny.

Needless to say, unless you're an easily identified dandelion in our flower garden, you're going to get a free ride this year. Sue's sworn off weeding until everything has had a chance to bloom, flower, fruit, or whatever it's going to do this summer.

See you on the road, if I'm not still in the garden.