Feeling Beastly

As my friend Jeff, aka "The Beast" occasionally says, "I gotta brag for a minute".

On Saturday, my friend Russ, who I ride quite a bit with, was in Sylacauga attending to an on call rotation that he has there once a month, and so I found myself anticipating the Saturday morning rollout for a ride with the boys and girls from the club. It's been a while since I've done a weekend club ride, and once my sweet wife gave me the go-ahead to join them, I was feeling good.

Unfortunately, my alarm didn't sound loudly enough to wake me up at the right time, so I pulled into the parking lot at 7:30, the appointed leave time for the ride...but luck was on my side, as they were a few minutes behind in getting started, as the group was exceptionally large, probably about 55-60 riders.

This was a day with climbs on the menu, and I was really kind of excited to see how my climbing form would match up with some of these folks. I quickly found out as we reached the bottom of Smyer and I took off. The group had gotten strung out on the flatter roads leading to the climb, and I reached the bottom about 7th or 8th in the group, and 300 yards behind the leader. I easily caught each of the riders ahead of me and continued to work hard the remainder of the climb, setting a new PR by 5 seconds.

Next up the climb up Caldwell Mill road, a bit steeper than Smyer, but just as long. 5th to the top of Caldwell Mill, in the lead group. Then out the half dozen climbs heading east on Sicard Hollow. Again, in the front group all the way to the end of Sicard Hollow/Rex Lake.

After a brief stop to reload water bottles, I had to make a decision. I could head back west on 78 into town and go home, or I could continue on with the group out to Trussville. I've never been on the roads they had planned, but I wanted to try them. Also, I was feeling like I haven't felt in years. The decision was made easier when I remembered that my wife had mentioned she was taking the kids to a program at the library that morning, and I knew I wouldn't be missed for the extra 90 minutes the rest of the ride would take. So my decision was made and I continued on the longer route.

Now, to make a long story short, let's just say that I was feeling good, attacks were flying right and left, and all of them were covered. Never once was I in any danger of needing my iPod to keep me company as I watched the pack disappear into the distance. At one point, I charged up a small power climb, thinking that I was just keeping pace. Looking over my shoulder, the rest of the group was 50 yards behind. Now, normally, this is cause for alarm when I'm on a road I don't know. Why?

Flashback to a story from 15 years ago
It was race night in Provo, and the course that evening was from Springville, out around West Mountain, and back to Springville. Approaching the northest point of West Mountain, I managed to escape the peleton. Surprised that they let me go, I continued working my tail off to build a lead that I could sustain. Did I mention that I'd never ridden this route before? With a good 90 seconds in hand I looked ahead of me as I was riding down the west side of the mountain and saw a climb. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been any bad thing but a) I had just worked like crazy to build a lead, and b) well, there isn't a "b", but in any event, they caught me just over at the top of the climb and while I was able to stay with them the rest of the way that evening, ever since then, I've been very wary when a group lets me go like that..

So, I'm 50 yards clear on a road I don't know, and alarm bells should be going off, but they don't. Instead, I gave it more gas and found that sure enough, there was a climb ahead. That's okay, I replicated the story told above, climbing strongly enough to just get caught at the top of the climb and then staying with the group until John Rogers Drive...the climb that is usually my undoing on the Tuesday Night Pain Train. On the early part of JRD, my legs started to feel twitchy. I guess I was about 5th in the line at that point, and as the climb steepened, my legs decided that they didn't want to slow down with the group, so I shot out of the line and began sprinting up the hill. I had a good head of steam up and had just sat back down to work the rest of the climb up when DirtDog came flying up past me, so it was back to sprinting trying to get his wheel, but I couldn't do it. It was my one failure for the day. It says a lot that I even tried to catch him, because normally, I would have chuckled and settled into my own pace. I have no pride and I usually back off if the pain becomes too intense.

But this was no normal day.

Then, to make a great day even better, when I got home, I found that my wife hadn't in fact made it to the library with the kids, but instead of being miffed that I had been gone longer than I had said I would, she said it didn't matter and was glad that I'd had fun! How great is that?

The moral of this story? Training pays off and every once in a while you feel invincible. And what a great feeling that is!