Too many pints

Went to Norwood center with the work crew last night. Started at Conrad's and finished at Napper Tandy's. I was the oldest one there. There will be no training today...

Since I knew we were going out at night, I snuck out for a lunch ride around Blue Hills earlier in the afternoon. There was some construction out on 138, and traffic was all jammed up, so I went around on the short loop by Reebok that comes out across from the access road. Even though I only had this 10 minutes of warmup, I didn't feel like dealing with traffic so I just headed up the hill in my 41x27. I am plodding along slowly, trying not to go too hard, planning to do a few repeats. About a third of the way up I suddenly feel a push from behind. I turned around and it is none other than Markie Mark, laughing hysterically. He had another guy with him. He must have just been riding it for the hell of it, as he stayed in the saddle the entire way, just powering up at a (for him) comfy pace. Of course he rode right through me. I ended in about 6:20.

Turned around and rode back down behind those guys, but they rode off at the bottom, and I turned and went back up, trying to go even easier this time. I thought I was doing OK but I must have really died near the top and it came to 6:30. I did a few circles for extra recovery time, then just after starting down I see a guy in a Bike Link kit flying up. It was Colman O (guy with white beard featured in the Ninigret break photo a few posts back). He is an animal. At the bottom I waited for him, and we chatted a bit. He said his best ever was around 4:30. I told him I thought Markie had reported a 3:40, and he was incredulous. I'm like dude, he was US Pro champion, don't you think he's a little faster than us?

Colman headed back up so I followed. Once again, I thought I was doing OK, sort of keeping pace on the less steep lower half. Once we got to the switchback he was pretty much gone. I plodded up at least 30 seconds down, ending at exactly six minutes, at least matching my earlier attempts from this year.

I've got Sturbridge and Palmer on deck this weekend. Never did Sturbridge before; I don't think it's a good race for me personally, but I'm having so much fun with our team this year I thought it best to go. Everyone is healthy and it's both more enjoyable and satisfying to work on a team effort and try to accomplish something. It helps that we're all great friends. KL will have an almost full squad from Terry there too, so that will be fun to watch. Thanks for reading.