What a day of training I had! I made it to the Java Shack at 6:30 and was pleasantly surprised to see the turnout for the hill ride. Tomas, Scott, Chris Marrow, Dana, and Matt Donahue of CityBikes showed up. This wasn't going to be anything like last week. We were gonna crank. I was very excited. I haven't had a chance to ride hills hard since camp and I've been missing that feeling of leaving guys suffering behind me.

Tomas led us to the hills of Arlington and we rode mostly down Military Rd. and I took off going downhill. Well, I didn't know they'd changed the route and I missed my second turn of the day. We eventually hung a left on 31st and rode to Marymount. I was feeling strong from the start and Tomas was putting up a good fight. I pulled away near the end and we found Joe Metro circling in the parking lot.

From there, we rode down Glebe Rd. to take the right on Old Glebe. We rode down Military and took the right we were taking last week--on 35th. We rode a couple intervals from this starting point: one going on Vermont past the golf course and onto Rock Spring, the other taking Woodrow to 32nd. I took both intervals by a good margin and felt good doing it. The final hill going past the golf course is wall. I feel like I need a ladder every time I try to climb that one.

My stomach was acting funny for a while. It was probably just objecting to working so hard this early in the morning. But it settled down and didn't cause me any trouble.

On the final interval, we were supposed to hang a right on 31st, but I was leading and missed the turn. I looked back and saw Dana and assumed I had it right, but then I realized he was the only one following me. We got turned around and road the correct interval to get back with the group.

We rode back down 31st to Military and back to the Java Shack to finish off the ride. It ended up being exactly 20 miles. The effort was great. My legs were really feeling it and I definitely got in a great workout. I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't challenged on the hills. After putting up a fight early, Tomas was behind me for the duration. I'm not sure if he was holding back or not, but he, Steve Robinson, and Kevin Gottlieb have been the only ones to push me on a climb so far.

After fighting traffic to get home from work, I finally got put on my riding gear again and headed down to Hains Point. Hains is kind of the Mecca of cycling in DC. It's like the playground of sprinters--the closest thing to "pick-up" endurance sports you're can find. Basically I can show up and ride my butt off. It's great fun.

I rode a lap around the point looking for guys. I eventually came across Mark Skubis who was just doing LSD. I hammered onward to find more riders, but eventually decided to stop and wait. That was a smart decision because the big pack rode up just after I pulled over. I hopped on and tried to figure things out.

At first I wasn't sure if I'd stumbled on a team doing some sort of workout, but it was eventually clear that nothing special was going on--just pacelines with sprints. The wind was blowing hard to the West, so everytime we'd sprint to a street sign going away from the point. We were hitting 37 mph easily with the wind at our backs.

I finished between 2nd and 5th or so on each sprint and I probably did four of them. Dave Osborne, a sprinter with Artemis, was winning most of the sprints. He's one of the best and it was great to see him in action. Maybe next time I'll try to hold his wheel? This all felt about the way it felt riding in the 3/4/5 race at Tradezone. Things are a lot different going that fast. It left me tired and ready to get off the bike for a bit.

I left around 7:30 and rode home with Kosta. The wind was still up pretty high and I'm surprised that the rain held off until we got home. My legs were toast and boy did it feel good. I got in hills in the morning and sprints in the afternoon. What more could I ask for?

Dist / Time / Avg / Max / Odo
20.62 / 1:12:42 / 17.0 / 38.5 / 1050.1
26.51 / 1:18:41 / 20.2 / 38.5 / 1076.6