Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

Home -> Kirkland

I wore my nice new O'France shirt, which is a lovely shading of deep blues, with an orange-accented flower motif that seems more Hawaiian than French. Or like something from the book/movie Annihilation, which is a book I found to be somewhat incoherent and largely unsatisfactory. Nothing that happened appeared to have much relation to anything else; the plot seemed merely to be a series of mysterious, creepy/horrific occurrences for their own sake. To be fair, perhaps there is better explication in the sequels.

C • Flower motif 5

Kirkland -> home

Standard MI CCW loop. Really good energy and speed today. Went around a corner and all of a sudden there was this huge group of 25 or 30 fit-looking riders coming the other way; I almost did a 180 to catch up and figure out if it was some kind of group I could get in on.

C • Group 4

97 -> 970 -> 10. An excellent and scenic loop with smooth, lightly trafficked roads; the stretch of Highway 10 through the Yakima River canyon is a particularly nice ride. Not much of a shoulder at times, but there is *very* little traffic since it is made almost completely redundant by I-90. I found that the sweet spot is the (right-hand) narrow strip of pavement gradually worn smooth by the passage of many vehicles - you just have to stay a bit wary of getting run over.

C • Sweet Comic 2

In Ellensburg for referee reasons, so got out for a nice scenic ride wandering around the grid NE of the city. These are definitely country miles; around Seattle you go, say, 10 miles, and you've gone from one city to another, or across a bridge, or through like six neighborhoods, and you can definitely say okay, I used to be *there* and now I'm *here.* Out here, you go 10 miles and there's little outward evidence you've gone anywhere at all. The fields and hills and mountains remain unmoved.

First few (and last few) miles were a bit adverse, into a savage NNWish wind (they have country wind here too) and a slight but steady <2% grade, but the payoff was ten miles back south absolutely FLYING. Pushed pretty hard for about 9/10 of one mile just to see if I could average >30mph - sure enough, 1:59.

Stretchez plus some pushups and plancks

Down the Interurban to Algona...and back up the Interurban. Basically softpedalling going south, working harder coming back into the wind, but legs felt up to it. I ate an apple afterward, then, absentmindedly reaching into my lunch bag for something else to eat, grasped *another* apple core, presumably (hopefully) from yesterday. I then was somewhat dumbfounded, looking back and forth at an apple core in each hand. I reacted poorly; they do not prepare you for situations like these in training.

To/from the Mariners game. Ran into and chatted for a bit with none other than Pink Socks and Gina Socks, who happened to be just one section over from us. A fortuitous and pleasant encounter.