"Not Hard"

In typical thick accent, Russian professional triathlete Andrey Lyatskiy says to me, "You go wiz me? Not hard." As he says my facial expression of disbelief, he says, "not fast, it vill be eazy". I shake my head, and think to myself, "well, what do I have to lose? Let's go!"

Approximately 10 miles later, after holding somewhere between half-ironman and olympic distance race pace from the start, and much higher when climbing up a hill, I'm done. Dropped. Right in the middle of what has to be the worst winds Florida sees outside of hurricane season. With a climb looming ahead, I think to myself, "What did I get myself into?".

Reduced all the way to my smallest gear, and still struggling, I do eventually make it to the top. And after a few more miles of pedaling mindlessly, Andrey comes flying by, doubling back, signaling to turn around and follow. I do.

And I suffer. For another short eternity... before I realize we've only gone a few more miles. He shows me the way back and I take it gladly.  As he leaves, he mentions "that waz warmup, time to go hard now". And THAT was a hard run day for him...

Now I could blame my lack of ability to keep up with all sorts of things, such as the hard ride I did with another pro, Zach Rubles, the previous day, where I spent most of the ride doing all I could to hold his wheel and then still getting dropped whenever he wanted to turn it up just a bit more. But the fact of the matter is, these guys are simply on another level of bike power that I'm just not at. Yet.

So you can imagine my bewilderment when today, Andrey asks me again, "You go wiz me...? Not hard." But instead of cowering in a corner and whimpering, "no more, no more..." I grabbed my bike immediately and said, "Let's do it", surprising even myself.

Luckily today was a long, "eazy" ride for him. He was going 4.5 hours. Surely, I could at least keep up for half of that, right? I was ready this time. Yesterday was an easy spin. My legs were ready to go. Well, just like last time, the pace started hot, and never relented. After a very, very long time of extreme suffering, I was certain I'd made it at least an hour and a half, maybe closer to two. I asked. We'd almost gone one hour. 55 minutes in fact.

Another 20 minutes, and I thought I was toast. Luckily the area we were riding was mostly flat. If there had been any number of big hills like the previous day, I would have been dropped long ago. But with lots of wind to slow him up, and me right on his wheel, I was hanging in there. If only by a thread.

At one point during this ride, I thought I might make it the whole way. And that's about the time we hit a nice, big hill. Immediately I was popped. I'd been at a bit faster than half-Ironman race pace for 2 hours and 20 minutes now. It was time to call it a day. So that I could survive to bike another day.

Overall, I was very pleased. It hurt like crazy to bike that hard for that long without the adrenaline of a race. In fact, I now have a new understanding of the phrase "not hard".