The little egg that could

It was about a third the way through our first 400-meter jump this morning that I almost hurled up my egg sandwich breakfast. I was stuffing my face with it as I tried to leave the house a few hours earlier with my bag of gear, Louisa, and cup of coffee in hand. Nope, two hours is not sufficient amount of time to digest something so tasty, yet so revolting as your body tries to shut down your stomach in an attempt to supply the rest of your body with an adequate supply of fresh blood at 30 m.p.h. Nor is there enough room in your guts for your lungs to expand to intake more O2 and push out the used air. Yup, not much room for that egg sandwich to lay back and slowly makes its way through the journey of life called digestion.

When the first sprint finally ended my little egg thought he was home free, but that was just the beginning of the intense workout. Three more 400-meter jumps, and then 4 more 10-lap pursuits were ahead. As I was riding slowly around the track recovering from that first effort, I said out loud that I almost hurled my breakfast and of course someone shouts back, "It's not a good workout until somebody loses their breakfast!" Yes haha Funny Man. Turns out that more than a few of us were having the same dilemma about bad food choices before a hard workout. At least I didn't have a swarm of black beans or cheese chasing down my little egg friend.

After another hour of sprints and egg burps, my belly was nearing normality and my energy was beginning to flow more in my favor. By that time everyone else was leaving for the day, but I still wanted to get out and ride. I moseyed out onto the track and Jane, Molly, and John followed out. What started as a nice cool-down paceline turned into John and myself doing yet another hard series of pursuit laps. Round and round. Again and again. Neither of us was counting laps so I just relied on my body to tell me when it had had enough. After a few more miles my body finally made contact with my brain that it was time to lay off and go find my flipflops. "I have 3 more in me," I yelled out to my partner. "No....5 more!" he yells back.

"That little shit!" I think to myself. Fuck he knows I won't back down. Two laps down and Jane yells out the bell lap, thinking we were almost done, but John the Devious shouts back, "No 3 more!" And onward I pedal.

John is an excellent training partner and knows when to push me that extra step. He knows I don't whine or quit and can go harder than I pretend. I push and pedal and spin like mad and try to do my 1/2-lap pulls as smoothly as possible so I don't lose any speed. It's one of the trickier aspects of racing, esp with only 2 people.

"Ding Ding Ding!" yells Jane as we zoom by her one last time. Fuck I'm so wasted. My legs are nearly blown. I can't hold the pace much more, but John yells to keep going. I spin and grimace and charge a little more. Zoooooooooooooooooooom past the finish line and we're done. Time to back off and let the bike take over and let the heart rate find its way back to earth. An excellent end to the morning, again pushed out of my comfort zone, but with my little egg intact.