Weekend Close

by Robbie
A week(end) to go down in the books... despite being totally exhausted.

Tuesday:
Not really the best week ever, some bad lows and good highs. Tuesday’s Bus Stop ride was horrible. The wind was blowing from the northwest pretty hard, and I was on the west side of the pack while heading north, which means I was catching a lot of wind, especially because I’m ten-feet tall. Wait wait wait… let me start over. As you may remember from the last Weekend Close, I had just finished up a long week and weekend of riding. However, I didn’t give myself much rest afterward. I went to bed pretty late on Sunday night for numerous reasons, one of them being that I was anxious about my stolen bike. Monday night, I stayed up late working on a Road Ragin’ piece for VeloNews. I wouldn’t have stayed up that late if I had finished gathering sources over the weekend, but I was too busy riding, and besides, the rider I interviewed (which I will keep disclosed for now) didn’t come back to town until Monday anyway. On Tuesday, I woke up early and went straight to the couch, where I sat working on another VN piece until 4:30pm, at which point I fried up some eggs, threw on the chamois, and raced up to the Bus Stop for some hardcore, shaved, spandex action.

Back to the wind. So… it was really windy, I couldn’t get a good draft (which shouldn’t have mattered) but I got totally blown before we even got to Lyons. I tried to catch on when they came out of the Fruit Loops but I failed. Regardless, I went into TT mode and chased anyway. They didn’t gain much on me until I cracked heading south on 75th, at which point I caught Tom (ex-Full Cycle dude) and Alex Howes (sp?) of Slipstream-Chipotle. Alex had a very good excuse for falling off the back, he had a bruise the size of a watermelon on the inside of his leg from smashing into a car at 40 mph. He had been pedaling pretty much entirely with his left leg, not bad. That night, I stayed up until 6:45am the next morning working on a VN piece.

Thursday:
Ugh. The plan was to do 1:30 x 15-20 sprints. The reality: me soft-pedaling for two hours while I struggled to make it to Jamestown. Meanwhile, Spencer and Garrick were really bored and doing circles around me. After descending back to 36, and after I refused to climb Olde Stage, I really hit a low in my energy. I wasn’t bonked, hungry, or dehydrated (maybe a little dehydrated actually), I just couldn’t ride my bike. After we got up that little dip by the Neva Rd exit I just wanted to get off my bike and sit down, or walk. I couldn’t get my heart rate up, or my breathing. I tried on the way up to Jamestown and I tried heading back to Boulder, but no matter how hard I tried the result was burning in my legs and frustration.
I asked Mr. Neal Rogers about my riding performance, which I was beginning to make a habit of, and he attributed low energy to three main things: 1. Lack of sleep, 2. Lack of food, 3. Dehydration. It made me feel better to hear this because all three applied to my case. I had been eating old bagels that I got for free off the street for three days; I hadn’t been sleeping; and my lips were super chapped from dehydration. Not to mention two full days on the couch after a long weekend of riding, surprised I didn’t get a blood clot.

Friday:
Rode my Waltworks fixed gear after getting it back the night before, beautiful.

Saturday:
Same old ride up to Raymond on over to Brainard Lake. New addition to the ride was Nick. He did very well for his first time up to the Peak-to-peak, as far as I know. He seemed to be doing fine on the last tough climb after Raymond when Spencer and I decided to go on to Brainard, while Mike, Heather, and Nick went down through Jamestown. I still felt exhausted, pretty worthless. I had a couple good strong efforts, but I couldn’t recover and was fully bonked by the time we reached the base of the road up to Brainard. Spencer is 10 times stronger than he was two weeks ago. He was dragging me along for the ride all the way up to the gate and beyond. Eventually we pulled over to look for mushrooms, no luck—just a lost cleat cover, wet socks, and cold knees. Spencer continued to drag me through the Brainard Lake loop, down through Ward and up the backside of Olde Stage. I felt extremely weak, despite eating two of my own Clifbars and one of Spencers. Calories weren’t the problem, maybe it was the heat? I did drink five water bottles during the span of our ride. Who knows… getting sick of being weak. Thanks to Spencer and Jen for an awesome dinner at Pupusas (sp?), first real dinner in a few days.

Sunday:
Last long ride before the criterium in Dillon (9000ft) coming up on Saturday, Aug. 18th. In an effort to acclimate, I’ve been spending as much time as possible at high altitude. Today’s adventure involved towing a B.O.B. trailer up to Ward on up to Brainard Lake. Finally feeling stronger. Kept a good pace all the way up. Passed people, actually, wasn’t really expecting to. Will and I hid our bikes in the woods up at Brainard, changed into hiking clothes and shoes and hiked up to the tree line in search of mushrooms. I bonked somewhere around 11 or 12,000ft. In my dizzy, oxygen-deprived stumble up some mountain I managed to collect a basket full of boletes and scaly tooths (Teeth?). Between the two of us, I think we gathered somewhere around 20-25 pounds of fungus. I dragged my feet down a really steep mountain, tripping and kicking rocks and roots, and eventually made it back to my bike where a Clifbar awaited my consumption. Ran out of water completely, no big deal though, all downhill to the spring in Ward. Beautiful day in general. Feel good about my ride up to Brainard with the trailer, and satisfied with the mushroom hunting. Oh, and by the way, no wonder people hunt pheasants, they have no sense of “fight or flight;” they’re like domestic cats. This pheasant today actually walked with us for a couple hundred meters. The only reason we parted ways was because we made a sharp turn uphill. After the pheasant led us to one of our first boletes of the day, we decided that it was lucky, and that to hunt it would be extremely unlucky. I’d like to go back up to Brainard before September with a tent, fishing pole, and woven basket, and eat sautéed fish and mushrooms for dinner every night.
As I sit here, I’ve got a face full of sunburn, a stomach full of freshly cooked mushrooms and pasta, and maybe a hint of hope that my energy will return for Saturday’s race at 9000 feet.