rode the oval training ride again yesterday, attempt #3, and first time without a illness or weather or whathaveyou as an excuse. my goal for the ride was to make it to the Wall with the group (about 90 minutes in) and do the full course at high intensity even after getting dropped.
so the ride goes out, uneventfully, missing Ze and the other college crew due to races, but with a couple of big guns, its fast but steady early, having learned my lesson twice now, i get away from the damn front for the first surge and managed to stay comfortably in the pack this time instead of going from pushing it at the front to dangling off the back over the course of this first short hill.
stay in the pack past previous efforts, feelin good, talkin to people, theres an attack off the front and i somehow accidentally get caught up in the rotation trying to reel them in, i do two or three turns in the rotation of 6-7 guys and get to the back and its time to grab wheel and push through again, and i got nothin. i'm way outclassed, so i apologize and try to get the hell out of the way. enjoyed the rotation time though, in retrospect i was cooked then and there though.
back in the pack, everything is smooth and uneventful until about a mile from "the Wall" me and about 10 other guys get gapped at a stoplight just before the acceleration up the the base of the wall.
we're done and we all know it. but we try to put together a chase anyway, but cant get it together. a couple of guys go out too hard and fade fast, a couple of guys come up from behind them and grind steadily up the wall, a couple of them i never see again. we end up with 4 guys, me and a teammate and two 3s from nebraska, whos friend is in the pack and who no idea where they are.
theyre cooked but we cant drop them cuz theyre lost so we hang out with them for a bit until a guy who flatted and knows them volunteers to tow them home and teammate and i go back to chase pace. of course we know we're not really catching anybody, but lets get the best workout we can out of it.
blah blah...
looking at my garmin, the first hour after we spelit we worked quite a bit harder than we did in the pack. while i'm bummed to have been gapped by a light, i feel good that i got further than i've gotten, more comfortably, have learned a little every week, and have every reason to think i coulda made it at least to the halfway sprint this week if not for bad timing.
was totally cooked this morning and grateful for a recovery day (museum w the fam). made my totals for the week though: 270 miles, 16.5 hours. first week of build was a success i think, and i think im pretty much recovered from being sick and giving blood.