Paskenta

Recovering with some guacamole and root beers, chips are food, etc.

Actually a good game today, about the second game I watched all season( the cross gets in the way of such pursuits)

Gracias to Vick and his family for hosting me, a great dinner last night with old friends and new ones, getting a bit of 411 on the masters' cycling scene is always fun.

Vick and I were forced into a garage ride yesterday, and the forecast was gloomy for Sunday, but that storm blew itself out, leaving snow on all the ridges around Chico, very nice.

With the forecast the ride was smaller than last year, a light south wind pushed us along out of Chico, then we turned left.....

And that shit blew up.
I followed Vick as he turned the big diesel up to 8, passing lots of riders. He made it on while I lollygagged and got dropped again, kind of a varying focus for me, from pondering my navel and thinking about guacamole to getting back to sanctuary one rider at a time and dialing the suffer-meter up to high.
The pack was probably down to 30 by now before Corning, things were settling a bit, although a few riders were doing the whole blasting up the gravel on the right move, a few close calls and then the inevitable crash about midpack, not sure if that behavior caused it or not, but it definitely struck me as a bit dumb for a training ride in February.
I missed it, but Vick caught the tail end, all good though, but a couple guys looked to have busted collarbones, and sore ribs.
The front group was gone, but we rounded up some stragglers and formed a nice paceline, turning left on Black Butte and a 75 mile cutoff.
I really like the riding up this way, we did 30 miles probably of focused riding without any stop signs before we had to slow for a bit as the crash was taking it's toll on a couple of fellas.
Calls were made, and after dropping off the wounded, we headed back to town, picking up a big group of century riders.
One more nice hard segment there at the end, some good race pace, I just looked at the file, the last 10 minutes Vick and I were with one other guy trading pulls to the empty finish line, the power rose on every pull, and the HR was flying by the end.

Nice race simulation, now hopefully this allergy thing is just that and the training isn't derailed, a good week has been planned if I can hang, topped off with some Copperopolis Loops or something equally stupid and hard on Sunday....