I spent most of the day packing and shipping stuff (Dave - you sent me $20 too much - I'm going to make you shotgun a pitcher of Arrogant Bastard when we're out in January...) But I also got out for an hour and did my first hard climbing effort of the year - up Flagstaff road, here in Boulder.
Of course, this came about a month after it was supposed to, thanks to my lung infection problems, but c'est la vie. As you may recall (or probably don't) last year in May I managed a 15:10 or so on my singlespeed (with slicks) on Flagstaff for my first hard effort of the year. Not exactly world record pace, but not bad for me. I did it in 15:03 a week or two later, then started the race season and stopped doing personal time trials for the rest of the year.
Well, this year it's mid-April and I just did a 14:50 or so (timing with a cellphone is a little tricky, and I had to stop for an idiot in a car who was in town for Boulder's 4/20 pot smokeout...) on my old man/hybrid/cross/skorcher/flat bar road bike. To keep things reasonably comparable, I left it in the 50x19 the whole time (my singlespeed had a 38x16 last year). I was on 35c knobbies, which are probably a little slower than the slicks I was on my single, and the 'cross bike is a tiny bit heavier, too. So the equipment *probably* didn't have a big effect - I'm hoping that I'm actually a little faster at this point than I was last year, despite the illness problems.
Blah, blah, blah. I still think my original hillclimb goal is pretty much undoable at this point, but at least I can try to be faster than last year, right?
BTW, James sent in this photo of himself in a *real* race. Thanks dude!
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