Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Equality

Good news: Mission Cycling wiped clean the digital jersey slate with our new fiscal year (beginning 1/18/12) so I'm no longer slogging around the bottom of the barrel for not having had a Garmin until last summer. The bad news: Christopher Robin and John Wooden, they of the 6.51 and 7.08 times up Hawk Hill, respectively (versus my best of 7.34), are new MC members. But as the actor playing Lord Grantham says about what it's like to act with Maggie Smith, the Dowager Countess, If you want to be the best, you've got to work with the best.

So to get any Hawk Hill jerseys, I'll have to be strategic. That wasn't the case this morning. I was a pack mule. I pulled Dr. Wooden all the way to the circle where I watched him pedal away while I spent half a minute trying to find my breath. And half a minute is what he beat me by, coming across the line with his second fastest time at 7.14.

On the Sprint, I led the group across the start and was planning to stay there as long as I could, again doing the work to possibly allow somebody else to slip away at the end, but Captain Fixie wanted to lead. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Who the hell knows what a gift horse is, but I know what it means, so I rode the Captain's wheel for a half mile and jumped just before the second stop sign. I felt somebody else on my wheel, but I pedalled like mad through the line for my first jersey of 2012, looking over my shoulder on the other side to find Vitaly, Vitaly, my old bete noire who Baleen said took all the jerseys I deserved. I'll have something to tell her tonight over some cheesy shrimp.

No comments: