Blazin' Bunnies!

Saturday morning I was out doing my intervals on Harts Island Road. I had just started and had cranked up my speed to 26 mph with the aim to hold that for 2 miles (had to do this six times with 2-mile breaks inbetween) when I took a quick glance toward the one o'clock side of the road. In the sorta tall grass I saw an eye with two tall ears above it. By the time I had analyzed the data to determine it was a rabbit, that sucker came shooting out across the road, darting by my front wheel, missing it by 3-4 feet right in front of my eyeballs! Now, when you're zooming along at 37.84 feet per second, a rabbit that's 3-4 feet from your front wheel is awful darn close! If that rabbit had decided to run out on the road about a micro-second later, it'd have probably been killed and I'd have been tumbling along the road hoping not to break anything or jar any organs or lose too much skin. I kept cruising along since it happened so fast I didn't have time to reach my brakes. It DID wake me up for the rest of the morning!

The rest of the ride didn't go so well. My first, second, and fourth intervals were good, achieving what I wanted but the third, fifth, and sixth intervals were ugly...especially that sixth one. I couldn't get past 23 mph to save my life. The legs felt like they had no power although I was still turning the cranks at 96 rpm in a lighter gear. I'm hoping it's because I'm only into the second week of my TT training and that the legs are still getting used to the idea of being pushed hard. I still have two more weeks of this followed by a taper-down week leading up to the time trial on the 14th. The TT bike is getting serviced at this time, getting a new chain (to replace the gunky one that came with the bike when I bought it) and readjusting the gears. I'm also hoping to borrow a disc wheel for the race which would let Jonnene use my 100mm rear wheel. Maybe that will help.

There were only five of us at this morning's ride where we got the scoop from Mike and David about their experience at the Hotter'n'Hell bike tour over the weekend. Mike did pretty good, covering the 100 miles non-stop in 4:41. My personal best at that ride is a 4:18 in 1996 during the race portion...with one stop when I ran out of fluids.