A Typical Morning

I'm sitting here enjoying my typical (maybe even obsessively habitual) breakfast of a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, followed by two slices of bread with Adams Peanut Butter and Honey. I think I've had it almost every morning for about as long as I've been riding. My hair is fashioned as it always is at such an hour, with my 4-5 inch curls somehow defying the laws of physics and sticking straight towards the ceiling (I usually have a helmet on my head by 9:30 anyway, so...).

This morning there are a couple of things different, however. I am of course, in Blog-o-land (yes, watch out 'blogosphere', my phrase is going to take over). A truly typical morning, however would have me buried in the latest issue of Scientific American, which then sometimes requires trips to WikiPedia for background research. You may find me reading Popular Science as well, but that would have to be within 2-3 days of when it arrived in the mail, because every other page is an Ad, and the articles they do have are mostly illustrations anyway.

You may be surprised to know that I pretty much never read cycling magazines. VeloNews is expensive, RBA, which is still sent to me every month with a "This is your last trial issue!" label on it, even though I don't subscribe to it, is too full of those bike-review columns that basically just say that every bike is wonderful, and every time I catch myself reading Bicycling, I always wonder, do I really need to know about how to get rid of a beer belly, or how to tour the French wine country? On top of that, you can get to exactly what you want on VeloNews.com or CyclingNews.com for free and in about two seconds. Now under no circumstances would I ever be just eating breakfast. For some reason, it seems boring and unproductive to not use my time between bites (or courses in my case) to learn something about the world or at least check my email.

The other thing about this morning that is quite unusual is that I am coming fresh off a rest day, and preparing to do a tough motorpacing workout today. It also seems quite unusual that the sun is out and it looks quite nice outside, considering I've been having to ride through some pretty thick gloom (and rain) for the past week or so.

But back to the motor pacing -
I have, of course, got quite a bit of experience motorpacing behind cars, as this becomes a necessary survival skill in European races, when you're bound to flat, crash, or have to drop back for water or a teammate at some point in just about every race. This puts you in the caravan of team cars, referees and support cars, and if you don't know how to draft and use the cars one by one to make it back into the peloton, you will be DNF'ing a lot of races.

I have never, however, done motorpacing behind a motorbike just for a workout. This is a staple of speed-work training in Europe, and so I thought I'd give it a try. I even went so far as to craft my own little derny-bike for the purpose. It is essentially a small modified mountain bike frame with 24-inch road wheels, some tricky gearing, and a weed-wacker type motor on it, and somehow the thing manages to go over 30 mph on 23cc's and way less than one horsepower. It is truly a marvel, and its perfect for motorpacing because it is fast enough to put me on the rivet, but throws about as much draft as a large-breed dog, so I will be pretty much doing my own work, with the bike serving as a rabbit for me. If all goes to plan, the motorbike will not fall apart, my brave companion will come out unscathed, and I will come out of it with a great workout and a pair of tired legs.

Alright, well lets get to it. I can only imagine what people who happen to see us will think...