Yesterday's RPM class was pretty rough. It was the Richter course, which has a nasty 45-minute climb in the beginning and a long descent with a few sneaky climbs mixed in. I took off in an early breakaway with Bill. He dropped me on a long descent about half way through the course, so I and finished second in my group (alone), with a pretty strong finishing time of 1:31:15 and an average of 232 watts.
I was really excited with it since the last time I did that course just four weeks ago, I averaged 216 watts. That's a huge improvement for that amount of time. I'm kicking myself for not having the finishing time from the last one for comparison.
I went home.... and managed to slide downhill all day. By early afternoon my legs were aching like crazy. By early evening, I had a bad headache. About 7:30, I was violently ill and spent the next two hours lying on my bathroom floor.
I crawled into bed and passed out at some point. Then at 6:30 this morning my alarm went off. I forgot I had signed up for RPM again today. I debated staying in bed but I figured I may as well get up and go.
I didn't feel too bad eating breakfast and driving into the city. I got there and felt this sense of dread as I looked some of the other guys in the class. Joe Wentzell, Ted Slack, Keith Robinson, and Glenn Krotik. All people who could smoke me any day of the week and twice on Sunday. And today is Sunday.
It started with Glenn taking off with Ted and me hot on his heels. Joe seemed to be taking it easy. For about a half hour, it was Glenn, Ted, and me pushing the pace. I tried taking a couple pulls, but with those two around I was definitely the weakest in the group. We put a mile or so between us and Joe. Then Ted got a flat tire. He was out for a few minutes fixing it, then got back on and started chasing.
With just Glenn and I, I was worried. I figured Glenn would drop me any time he wanted. After about 20 minutes, he got a flat. He was out for several minutes, then got back on and started chasing. I wasn't long before he was in a group with Ted and Keith. Now I was alone in the lead with Joe Wentzell chasing me. I had about a half mile lead. I didn't think I could hold him off forever but I was not going to give up easily. I was at about 22 miles and it was a 37.33 mile course. I figured if I could hold him off until I had 10 miles to go (27.33 miles completed), I'd be happy. I carefully watched his speed and kept mine as close as I could.
I saw that my average power so far was 238 watts. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could put in enough effort to increase that to 245 for the whole ride. It would mean riding at 270 watts or so for the remainder of the ride. I wasn't sure I had that much left in me and if I cracked, I probably wouldn't recover but I figured it would be worth the gamble. Besides, there's no shame in losing to Joe if I failed.
I started to notice a pattern. I pulled away from Joe on every hill. He pulled back some distance on every descent. There was a lot of descending to go, then an 8-mile flat stretch to finish. This is not good. To add to it, I was running low on fluids and kept thinking about getting off the bike grabbing a drink out of my bag.
I passed the 27.33 mark and still hadn't been caught. I thought maybe if I could get to 30 miles without being caught, I'd be happy. Then I passed the 30 mile mark without Joe catching me. At one point, Joe got within 400 feet. I really thought he had me.... then I started to pull away again.
When we hit the final flat section, I settled into a rhythm, I had 1400 feet on Joe and 3 miles on the chase group (who was on the long descent and gaining fast). All I had to do was not crack. I still wanted 245 watts average and had about 242 watts so far. It was going to be close.
Once my lead over Joe hit a half mile, I hopped off the bike, ran over to my bag, and grabbed another water bottle and got back on. I lost about 800 feet of my lead.
Then Joe sat up and started cooling down. It was just me.
With only a half mile to go, the computer ticked from 244 to 245 watts. I had it. And that's not all I had. I still had a 2-mile lead on the chase group. I had the average power I wanted (which was 13 watts higher than yesterday) and I won the group. I couldn't believe it.
Even considering the two flat tires of my competition, holding 245 watts for 1:46:25 is a really good performance.
It's hard to believe that 16 hours ago I was laying on the floor barely able to get up!
