Zoom.........Zoom!

I love those days when it feels like you have no chain on the bike. It feels as if you could mash the damn pedals right off the bike. Thursday night's ride was one of those days when I pushed as hard as I could without blowing up, staying right on that edge of completely destroying lungs and legs, and yet it felt like I left something out there when the ride was over. I can feel the suffering today, but man was last night's ride great!

It was amazing that only a few riders showed for last night's ride given that it was perfect weather: not hot at all, relatively low humidity, and no wind to speak of. Eddie Hudspeth has been frequenting our Thursday night rides when he is not racing the following weekend, and it was great to have him along with us. About 4 miles into the ride when we were tooling along at 18 mph, Eddie decided to ease up the pace a bit. He promptly got a 1/4 mile lead on the pack, and lets just say he held it there until he was ready for us to catch him. And try to catch him we did!

I sat in for the most part until reaching halfway up the Haneyville climb, and feeling warmed-up enough to go I grabbed two gears and pushed pretty hard up the remainder of the hill. I figured Eddie would see me coming and hold up a bit for me to join him. Not a chance. Although I'd gapped the rest of the pack by a few hundred yards, Eddie kept the gap at about 300-400 yards for the next 11 miles as I dug deep to gain ground on him and was pushing 25-28 mph the entire time. I know he could have left me further behind if he wanted, but it was the mental game of me knowing that he wanted to keep the same gap on me while making me work hard to stay away from the 3 riders chasing to catch me. Now that was fun! And painful! The 2 Chips and Pat finally closed on me just as we reached the cow and goat farms in Elko, so I eased up to save some energy for when they would purposely blow by me. Unfortunately, Pat blew up as they caught me but I joined the 2 Chips and we started working together. One of the Chips still needs to work on his paceline efforts so he 1) doesn't blow up pushing too hard, and 2) puts out enough effort to pass the person pulling off the front. He's getting better, but right now its pretty fustrating riding behind him in a paceline. He'll get there, however, I'm sure.

When we made it halfway through the Gilbert loop, I was getting tired but not willing to give up the chase. Eddie finally decided he was tired of riding solo and mercifully let us join him before hitting Elko road again. One of the Chips dropped off to ride home in Perry, so it was just Eddie and Chip with me on the way in. Eddie wanted to catch a few people in front of us, so we started rotating 30 seconds on the front. The last person Eddie wanted to catch was Flipper, and I was given the order to lead the way. Now THAT hurt!! Flipper apparently knew we wanted to catch him, but I managed to put down a 26mph chase effort and finally caught him about 1/2 mile later. And, at that time I sat up and just spun my legs the remaining 3.5 miles back to the parking lot.

I finished with a 21.3 mph average, and even though some of that was rotating with others I felt this was the hardest effort I've put out since knee surgery. Damn did it feel good!! Eddie said it was a great ride and enjoyed himself. He'll be back next week, and the games will be played again for sure.

I've missed the completely exhausted feeling I get after putting out everything I have on a ride. I couldn't even stay up to eat supper. I don't even remember my head hitting the pillow.......