The Fogdall Express
Coach Boris called me today, asking me if I was ok, if I have been sick or something, since he has not seen a blog post for a couple of days!! (3, in fact). I am fine, but I certainly have been lapping up this rest week like a hot and thirsty dog standing in the middle of a snow-fed mountain stream.
The house is clean, the laundry is done, my bike is fixed, the dog is hiked, it doesn’t hurt to stand up, and my body and soul is now ready for more hard training! yes, the rest week has accomplished its goal. If you imagine that a rest week for a full time athlete is just sitting on the couch relaxing, you would be half right, for a rest week is around half the training volume of a normal week. I will not reveal the secret blend of training that Boris prescribes for the other half of the time, but suffice it to say like most of my fast-twitch sprinter brethren, I improve dramatically with rest! So the few times I have gone hard this week, I have felt very good!
One of the workouts assigned was a 3-hour bike ride, and I had this crazy idea of riding out to Antelope Island & meeting my wife & car there. Antelope Island is a brown, scorched mountain arising out of the middle of the Great Salt Lake, quite dramatic in its barren lifeless bulk. My companion for this adventure was the qwadzilla himself, Kirk Fogdall. Kirk found a map/route from a local century ride that went out to the island. So we followed their table-top-flat prescribed route along gentle country & cul-de-sac roads, deftly avoiding the myriad of Utah roads that would be courting death-by-SUV.
This route was also liberally painted with directions & indicators from the century, on the biggest climb in the whole ride (where the route crossed I-15) we found BASSO painted in the road. It was such a wild thing to discover the name of the 2nd placed finisher in the recent Tour De France painted on a Utah overpass, that I just had to take a picture of it! I think this is the true sign of bicycle racing’s arrival as a mature American sport, that an Italian bike racer who has probably never stepped foot in the US has his name painted on a rural overpass!
2:15 into the ride, just as my fast-twitch fibers were starting to fatigue, Kirk’s bundled cables of mega-wattage slow twitch power began to kick in, To ride mano-a-mano with the “Fogdall Express” is a wonderful, painful thing; Kirk’s chain began relentlessly marching down his cogset till he was spinning his biggest gear. Kirk sustained over 30mph for much of the way across the final 7 mile long causeway to Antelope Island, displaying the reason he has Colorado State time trial championship medals on his desk. I stuck in his draft with my heart thrashing about in the upper 190’s, happy and determined. I tore my eyes away from his wheel long enough to glimpse the beauty of the glass-calm Salt Lake (and take these the pictures).
As we zipped along at racing pace, we thought of our wives & Kirk’s 2 kids waiting at the end of the causeway with lunch, and the upcoming promise of swimming/floating in the brine shimp saturated soup of the Great Salt Lake. There are a lot of reasons to do hard things, there are a lot of reasons to challenge yourself & discover strength in surprising places. Kirk is as fond of mentioning his beginnings of grey hair as I am fond of reminding him of moments like this, where 35 years olds like us simply do outrun any hints of age in completely consuming moments spinning big gears stupid fast in outrageously beautiful places. What a life!
Filed under: sweat
Nice ride!!