Last year, I think it was clearly known among our group that I hated hills. While my tolerance for it grew a lot this year (out of necessity), I now found something I despise more: Vince's interval training on the hills.
A few of us were still recovering from the weekend, so it started out fairly mellow going down CA. The pace picked up a little on the bike trail with Todd and PV (who carried the Sandy trophy) keeping us all honest, and even more so on Back Bay. Despite this, the group stayed together with only 1 person dropping off but catching up back on Jamboree. Adrian pulled ahead for a little toward the end of Back Bay, so I thought I'd buzz him as I sprinted by on the exit. Boy, was he startled.
The group stayed together through CDM and made it's way to NPC via PCH. The pace remained moderate though since most of us wanted to save some for the intervals. After sitting to cross the PCH to NPC, Marc, Hiroshi, Mike Z. and Vin were off while the rest of us received last minute instructions from Vince.
Basically, the deal was to go 90-100% for 30 seconds and rest (spin) as follows: 60-60-45-45-30-30-15-15...or something close to that. Vince was calling out the start and stop times based on his stopwatch, and we did our best to do the intervals accordingly. This added a whole new level of pain to our ride in my opinion. It got increasingly more painful to "spin" as we're climbing up Vista. Hearing Vince call out "Go" almost became unbearable after a while. Overall, the 7 of us did our best to perform the intervals and were pretty much blown up after reaching the top. Shannon did go ahead since he had to get back for a meeting, but at the top of Vista, no one was eager to do any extra credit and climb Summit.
For the non-interval group, Hiroshi and Marc finished first and Vin and Mike Z. followed after. Mike Z. had been working pretty hard, and had this picture taken 45 minutes AFTER taking a shower to show for it:
 |
| Someone needs to buy an office fan |
The ride down Ridge Park was a little hairy with a couple cars following the group. Adrian and Todd had gotten ahead going down NPC, but it was fun to chase them down and run back into them once we got on Bonita Canyon.
Todd and PV got the pace going pretty good on Bonita Canyon, but on the incline, I thought I'd perform one last interval and push it up the hill after the bridge. I got away for a little, but PV caught back up and pulled to McArthur. I thought I could break away after but got caught at the first light by the rest.
On Bison, everyone was trying to setup for the lights over the 73 with PV having created a little gap, but Vin had set up the 2nd light perfectly and sprinted past us. Given that he had only put in a little time with the group, plus the fact that he was wearing a loose tank top (Velominati rule 7 violation), there just was no way I could let him get away. HA HA. Although he had a good jump, I had caught and cornered CA with him. He didn't want any action to the gate where the real sprint ends as we all know. Keep trying, grasshopper, but for now, not on my watch.
Thanks to Vince for setting this up, calling out the times, and making today's training ridiculously painful. We'll have to add this to our training regimen AFTER the L'Etape.
Good job everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment