I was riding at hains with the wrob today.  he spanked me.  i was riding at my limit and he kept pulling through in strong fashion.  the upwind side was tough, but the downwind side was worse.  he was doing like 350 watts, with a tailwind, so there's nowhere for me to hide and no real advantage to drafting.  brutal, and my legs are shattered.  i had hoped to play some bike polo tonight but I'm going to have to feel significantly better than i do now.

to clarify something from robb's blog post, which references this entry, i should have been clearer.  robb is not the person who i was referring to as jackass #1.  I thought that was clear, but apparently it was not.  in fact, i don't know the guy's name, which is why i called him jackass #1.  robb probably knows who it is, but i don't really care enough to ask.  robb is right: it couldn't be him because he can't come around nima.  and it can't have been me: i can't come around nima either.  so it's someone else.  maybe robb will remeber who it was so i can actually call him out by his proper name.

the only place where i did call out robb was in telling him to update his blog more often.  robb is one of those guys who can dish it out, and take it.  that's increasingly rare in our area.  so it's nice to see him regaining some blogging form.  here's hoping he keeps at it, and does more blogging than riding, so the next time i see him i can kick his ass on the bike.

now that i think about it a bit more, i am wondering if rob had a significant advantage.  he was using an ipod and mentioned that he had the bad brains going.  after he mentioned that, i started trying to sing and hum all the tunes i could think of from i against i but ended up sort of endlessly looping and mixing parts of "at the movies", "sailin on" and "banned in dc" through my limited, lactate-addled cognition.  i seemed to really pick up the pace a bit and be able to push another cog at a slightly higher cadence.  i'm estimating that bad brains is good for an increase in terms of watts per kilogram for me on today's ride of 0.44 which is damned impressive.  my actual weight and wattage numbers are proprietary under union guidelines so i've already probably said too much.  so now i'm torn.  i loathe the joggers and cyclists i encounter on my commute who are not paying much attention owing to their ipods, but these things seem to have the possibility of a clear ergogenic effect.  we'll discuss this in more detail at the next supreme revolutionary council meeting for planning future cycling policy.

-sg