Day 37: Hill Intervals With Holland's Best

On Saturday's DC Velo ride I mentioned that there was a U23 rider there from Holland who rides for Park Hotel Rooding, Nick Mulder. He is an extremely strong and extremely talented 20 year old rider that absolutely killed it on Saturday. After I did really well on the sprint saturday, we started to talk for a while and I asked him before we finished the ride if he'd like to ride together at all before he is back off to Holland. He asked me if I'd like to come do a hill interval workout with him today on the same hill that he dropped me on Saturday, Great Falls Hill at the end of MacArthur Boulevard, a 1.1 mile 5% avg gradient hill with 150ft of climbing from bottom to top. Immediately I took him up on this.

We were planning on meeting in the AM but due to ice rain and wet roads covered mostly in ice and snow, we had to wait it out until about 3pm to get started. It was cold, wet, dirty, and the hardest hill workout I've ever done. We did the Great Falls Hill 10 times...Here is the route and view of the hill...Oh, and for curiosity's sake, I averaged 16.4mph for the ride.

____________ www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/27166758 ____________

Unsurprisingly, Nick beat me on the first 9 repeats. However, later he told me that he had a day off yesterday and he was completely fresh where as I had done a hill workout with Tim less than 24 hours ago. He has also been riding for 3 years against my 5 months and is years older than me. So, I didn't feel too bad about the first 9 hill repeats. The 10th and last one was amazing though. We both said to each other that we would go 100% all out on this one, and we did. I stayed with Nick the whole time, side-by-side. Finally the last small hill and flat finish...I hammered it and came out on top by less than a foot. He may have even beaten me. I dont know, to be honest, it doesn't matter one bit. The awesome part was we both went all out side-by-side riding in complete synchronization. It was the wettest, dirtiest, coldest, most uncomfortable workout I have ever done...and I LOVED it! Thanks Nick!