First of all I’d like to ask all my blog readers to sign the on-line petition to have OLN carry the Tour of Spain (La Vuelta a España), because the current programming schedule only includes a single, one-hour highlight show for the entire 3-week stage race! OLN has carried La Vuelta for years with live coverage and highlight shows every day of the race so this is a big disappointment. This link will take you to a page where you can read the petition and e-sign it; it also requires an e-mail address but they’ve put in some convincing anti-spam harvesting protection.
http://www.petitiononline.com/vuelta3/petition.html
In the Hurl Ride back in April, Adam declared his intention to break 30 minutes to the Junction – a phenomenal feat achieved by only the best riders. As an incentive to himself, he swore that if he did NOT come in sub-30 he would ride up the mountain in dorky clothes (Adam is a very “proper” racer boy, always in team kit) on JB’s folding bicycle. Well on the Hurl Ride he was 10 seconds more than 30 minutes and today was his day to “eat crow”. Here’s the photo of our motley crew:
That’s Tiffany, Brian (JB’s visiting nephew), Amanda, Adam, Jeff, JB, Cindy, me, Martin, and Eric (Nicole took the photo)
The eleven of us all started off together to share in the embarrassment but Adam was quite good-natured about the whole thing. His promises of breaking 40 and outsprinting the best of us on this 20” wheel bike were unfulfilled however.
Near Moss Landing we started to string out and by the bottom of the Bump I was in the lead group of four with Cindy, JB, and Eric (first time riding with us). By the Upper Washout it was just me and JB but I was holding back so he could stay with me. He seemed to be thinking that he could hang with me and we passed up a lot of the slower Diablo Cyclists before the Upper Ranch but that’s when I accelerated and rode away. Interesting that even though I was well below my normal speed up until this point, as soon as I went anaerobic I fatigued as fast as I would have had I been pushing it harder over the first 5 miles. Anyway, Junction time was 41m41s.
There were a lot of riders hanging around the Junction and we all watched everyone else roll in – Mark had even turned around and came up again with Adam and they had a little sprint. Lots of joking about Adam’s clothes and bike but it was all in fun. Still, I felt a little cheated that I didn’t get to ride with the faster guys today because I had good legs.
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