On The Edge

Rather a challenging week of work outs this last one. Tuesday and Thursday were particular nut crackers. Just looking at it, Tuesday looked the harder, and sure enough it was pretty rugged, but Thursday was a wolf in German Shepherd’s clothing. Didn’t help that it was a Brazilian degrees out, either. The bueno news is that even though I pretty well collapsed on the finish line of Thursday’s last interval, I was able to stick my foot somewhat up the bum of both workouts and I wasn’t at all sure that I’d be able to, so good.

Sunday morning was spent constructing the new HOT BUNS (so hot right now) to get ready for the season. Not so much free time between now and a cross practice weekend plus Tacchino is right around the corner. So I chucked that piece together and gave her a little shakedown cruise (with road wheels, on road) in la calor del dia. It’s been a while since I’ve stood up to pee (i.e. “used a non-compact crank”) so that was a bit different. When one’s legs are as blown as mine were on Sunday, one should stick to squatting. If I’d been on a sports team my jersey would have been number 39 because I spent nearly the whole darn ride in that thing. But the bike’s pretty sex bomb.

Saturday was the bigger day, with a loop from Sperryville, over Thornton Gap, down to Stanley, up this crazy ass climb to Skyline, and then back to Thornton and down to Sperryville. I need to tune this route a bit since there's too much time on 211 but holy shit this ride was a fricking monstah! Not helped by my missing a turnoff and inadvertently adding a good, oh, 16 miles to the tally. Not one minute of flat road on the whole thing. We actually rode a short bit of the Page Valley Road Race course (but backwards) and then did the freaking craziest climb I've ever done. Long, not so much with the paving (the part in the video is where the good road surface was), and frequently steep.



All the way up to Skyline, where we were treated to this view...

and then encountered... more climbing! Skyland station is the highest point on the drive. The ride ends with about 7 miles of "leave your chain at home" crazy fast very fun descending. If that picture shows up upside down, you'll have a pretty good idea of how I felt at the top.

Having done that climb with both of us on carbon clinchers I was thinking this is a prime example of "do as I say, not as I do" methodology. On the other hand, I know this guy who builds wheels...

After it was all over, I took a pretty serious detour off of the nutritional program. Man does not live by spinach alone.

If I haven't said it recently, it's pretty great when your wife is the one who's a driving force behind all these stupid things we do with bikes.