Hammer Head Racing Blog

I haven’t ridden for 13 days so I was very antsy to ride hard today to “blow out my cob-webs”.  I figured somebody might get hurt on this journey, but maybe not.  It might just hurt me since I have been off so long.  But regardless of others, I was going to ride till it hurt me!  The roads were nice and clear so there were no distractions and with 6 bikes my quest should be good, (Sgt ^Matt, Geek ^Greg, Hank^Andy1, Kong ^Andy2, Pops ^Tracy, Rob)^{(transitioning to new nick names).} We started out descent, but when we turned south I pushed at 100% up to 27 mph and held it there.  That’s fast, but with the tailwind I figured my band of warriors might survive it.  I figured wrong!  We lost Pops and Rob to the temptation of the mythical “Sirens” that lurk in the marshes of 100S to draw off riders and feed on their pain/fears. 

 With a 20 mph average we were building speed through the hills to almost 21 by the turnaround.  On a couple of hills we paused for regrouping cutting about 70 seconds out of the pace clock.  The surviving 4 made it to the lake crater where we lost Kong to a Sea monster snatching him out of the paceline ship.  This lake is always treacherous to our Odysseys.

 So the surviving 3 tried to stay tight and survive the trip home.  Geek was pulling so hard today I yelled to him, “Looks like today is your day Geek”.  And I fully intended on taking the last pull to lead him into the sprint.  Then while traversing the dangerous 400 hills the 3 headed pace monster snatched Hank off of the back and then there were 2!

 I traded pulls a few times with Geek.  But then I started off on my last pull 1 full mile from the end fully expecting him to focus on my tail for safety until he could take the sprint win.  But he lost focus on me and looked at Medusa standing near the last house and was turned to stone falling away due to the weight of his own body.  As the only survivor I simply coasted across the finish line alone.                                                       2^nd fastest December of all time 21.8 mph!

Today due to the icy road conditions we had to leave the road bikes behind and had to resort to me and Cliff on mountain bikes and Chris on his cycle cross bike (Howard-This was your type of ride-hard and wet).  Cliff egged me out today by asking me if I was going out and not thinking he was serious I said aren’t you. Tracey said we were nuts that the roads were too icy but after talking to him I think he was hurt that we were going out and that he forgot to bring his stuff thinking we wouldn’t ride.  Since the showers are still not working I decided to take a ½ day vacation and run home to get my mountain bike so I could ride. I think cabin fever is starting to set in already.

I started us out with the first pull and without a speedometer on my mountain bike I’m not really sure how fast we were going but it wasn’t fast enough for Cliff and Chris because they took off like we were on the road bikes.  We rotated about every ¾ of a mile going out staying on the throttle over the icy patches and through the snow to the egg plant. You could really sense the wattage increase in you legs going over the slush and snow. I took the first climb going south at the egg plant and had to get out of the saddle to force the snow tires to accelerate up the hill, Cliff, sensing my increase effort with my tire arrangement decided to attack me several times on the ride. He seemed to have the better setup with the semi slick tires than Chris and I or at least that what I’m going to claim. Coming home Cliff was pulling like a dog in heat and at times pulling several miles per hour faster than Chris and I. Now, I usually like Cliff’s pansy pulls to recover and to be honest Cliff actually pulling caught me by surprise and I had to go in the defense mode to tolerate the pain in my legs and the noise coming off my tires at that speed.

Three of us (Tracy, Cliff, Greg) went out on a relatively nice day compared to the recent cold very windy conditions.  Cliff then Greg got us off to a quick start that almost dropped me as we were doing 22-24 right out of the gate.  Then I took a long pull at 22 to recover a bit before turning back over to Cliff.  We did the reverse old 15 mile route and had a decent 23 mph average at the turn.

The hills and slight headwind slowed us up and by the time we made it back to the egg plant the average had dropped to 22.  The pulls started getting slower and shorter as we went across the flats especially for Greg who’s fighting a bad respiratory ailment.  Greg and I pulled up to 400W and then Cliff went at it hard going up nursery hill.  After a short breather we started picking up the pace over the last rise.  Then half way across the last flat Cliff attacked.  Greg and I both chased but were no match for him and he easily took the win.  Overall average was 21.4 mph.  

3 bikes took on the epic challenge and headed into the Wind at 15 mph, (Sean, A2, Cliff). Correction, after Cliff talked me into riding today he called back about 10.59 that he couldn’t ride because he forgot his tights or skirt, I can’t remember which one and would have to look it up in the Cliff’s pansy journal. Andy and I headed into the wind at a faster pace than I thought and managed to average 15 mph at the turn round. Hank told me in the parking lot that it was 25 deg and with 25 mph wind chill factor it was more like 11 deg (Chilly).