43m: Chasing the rabbit

I rode my bike to Torrey Pines State Park today with the intention of doing 5 repeats up the hill (inside the park) and to break my personal record on the first ascent. It’s kind of fun declaring to yourself that you’re going to break a PR. Like a Babe Ruth moment – pointing to the center field bleachers.

I was pretty psyched starting up the first time. There is a small kiosk at the entrance where cars have to pay to park and they’ve installed a really sharp speed bump, I guess to stop cyclists like myself from building momentum in preparation of the climb and zooming past the kiosk at 22mph. Oh well, that’s why bunny-hopping was invented.

I sped around the two curves at the bottom like a madman in an impossibly high gear and spotted another cyclist on the straightaway. It was perfect, now I was assured of breaking my record – I had a rabbit to chase!

I put an angry look on my face and began to chase my rabbit in earnest. I’ve found that I climb much faster when I look all pissed off – like my expression actually makes me angry and I push harder. Anyway, I look down and my HRM is pegged at 100% – I guess my max HR is a little higher than 180…

I catch my rabbit quickly, maybe halfway up the straightaway and as I pass him I give a friendly shout of something like “Come On!”, thinking maybe I can inspire him to chase me. My rabbit takes off like a, well… a rabbit and flashes past me as I exclaim, “There it is!”. He gets about 50 feet ahead of me and holds the gap to the top.

I chased and chased and chased. I can’t describe how much fun it was trying to close down that gap. I broke my personal record by 22 seconds (4:26 from stop sign at the bottom to the stop sign at the top). I finally caught my rabbit halfway to the Torrey Pines golf course, congratulated him and thanked him.

Then I turned around and did 4 more laps up the hill before returning home.

Tagged as: Training