Friday Ramblings: Sprinters, Flyers, and Fast Women.

You know that blog title got your attention.

First of all, I gotta apologize to the fast man Mr. Brew. At the Thursday sprints at hains, he honorably kicked my ass after a teammate gave me an early lead out. The Brew kicked my ass so badly in a one-on-one sprint that he startled the living daylights out of me as he veered in my direction.

I threw him some emotional words after he done scurred me sh*tless coming into my line that fast. Sorry DJ. Don't arrest me or nothin'. I sent him an email to apologize and let him know - it's wasn't about him beating me. I told him that I take flyers; I knew when he flew by I was beat. I just got scared and don't really like when things get dangerous on a totally open road.

Anyways, we chatted. No harm, no foul.

The rundown: On my last sprint of the night, Chris Chapel lead me out on a flyer, so I was in a nice draft. So was DJ. He wasn't caught off guard and grabbed my wheel. He held my wheel as long as he needed to, and then made his statement.

Definitive.

So it was not like I had a chance to beat him at all. I go up hills. I take long flyers in hopes of catching the chasers off guard. DJ is a sprinter. Holy crap, he's fast. I saw that first-hand.

Sprinters amaze me. That man goes from fast to gone in like 3 pedal strokes.

Anyways, I threw DJ the email because I sure don't wanna mess with the big boys or piss anyone off. I could learn a bit from these guys; we all need a bit more punchiness in our legs. We chatted back and forth and the guy made me laugh with his response. Hoping he doesn't mind me sharing, here's the closing line:

You are definitely a flyer cuz you handily rode away from your teammate the lap before and there was nothing I could do about it. That was pretty awesome. Sucked for me nonetheless, but awesome, and to know that your teammate provided the vocal soundtrack to it all made it worse.

Ahhh, yes, Mr. Chapel's "vocal soundtrack" cracked me up. Let's go backwards in time here to my second-to-last sprint lap. I was sitting behind my teammate Chris Chapel in the group. With is iPod blasting, Chris was singing at the top of his lungs, now leading a group of 30 folks at over 30 miles per hour.

Hard-man stuff right there. He does it all the time. I frikken' love it.

It always pumps me up when he's singing and hauling ass. I didn't know that I wasn't the only one that heard him singing. Which brings me to the song-of-the-blog.

There's something inside me,
That pulls beneath the surface,
Consuming, confusing,
This lack of self control I fear is never ending,
Controlling...

I can't seem to find myself again
My walls are closing in,
I've felt this way before,
So insecure...

~ "Crawling" by Linking Park

I heard Chris yell the "so insecure" line and got a bit antsy. I jolted with well over 1k to go to the line, and gunned it. I gunned it hard, stayed uber low, and hurt my legs good. Nobody stuck with me. I was pretty happy about that effort, especially because it was about 40 miles into my ride at that point.

The next guy across the line was Tim Rugg, who had tried to bridge up. That made me happy - Ruggles has got a big engine. Then he told me he'd been on his bike since about 4PM. It was about 7:30 PM.

Enough about the boys.

Here's a little something about The Woman That Made Me Fast. She found a post-collegiate frat boy and got him riding his bike again. She got him in shape by making him tag along on long rides. Then she got him racing again.

One of the stars in the sprints tonight was my girl, wearing her token handicapped-blue GW argyle kit. She was hard to miss, because she was the only long-haired blonde in the group, and the colorful kit makes her look like a jockey.

After warming-up with some childish sprints where was I leading out a few of the NCVC Cat 5 guys, Catherine stuck with the big sprints group for the rest of the night. I was ecstatic every time I saw her flying with the big dogs. I'm pretty sure she was the only woman that stuck with the group tonight.

She wasn't just hangin' on or hangin' in. She was hangin' tough, playing it smart near the front of the group and everything. Textbook. Like most of us, nearing the sprints, she was forced to bridge gap after gap after some guys cracked up front. And nearly every time, she was among the first few folks to cross our finish line of egotism just by being in the right position.

So she loaded her Garmin's info, and it turns out the sprints weren't a joke. They definitely weren't the hardest or fastest sprints we've done - the average speed was just that - average. Yet the last eight sprints were over 30 miles per hour.


In addition to the usual egotistical Cat 4 suspects like Chris and me, there were some hometown hotshots in the group: fast-twitchers like DJ, rolleurs like big Cliff and SuperDave, and even a pair of Harley guys made a cameo. Those boys don't exactly race in women's Cat 4 events much, but it didn't phase her - at one point, some dude rode up to her and called her a rockstar and an inspiration.

How 'bout them apples?