Hildegaard Goes to School

Luke and I meet downtown on Tuesday. Plan is: a warm-up ride to the North Side, then speed work on the Whitworth track.

A *warm*-up ride. But I look down to figure out where the hell my shoe clips into my pedal and, by the time I look up, Recumbent Man has screeched across "Go" and left me in the dust.

It's a couple miles before we hit a light and I catch up, gasping.

"So you think my bike is nerdy, eh?" he says. He has evidently had a chance to read my most recent post -- the one in which I may or may not have good-naturedly insulted his non-motorized vehicle and gloated about "giving Lukester a run for his money" now that I have clip-in pedals.

When being schooled, it's imperative to maintain a veneer of cockiness.

"I believe 'nerd-*mobile*' was the terminology used," I say.

"Well," he replies, with a new, very special kind of smirk on his face, "Let's see how fast this *nerd-mobile* can go" and speeds through the changing light.

No more Mr. Nice Luke.

The worst eight miles of my life later, we make it to Whitworth, me blind from sweating in my eyeballs. Speed training is awesome; I run my first 6:45 mile since my prepubescent cross-country glory days. I plop down on the grass, soaking in the awesomeness of being awesome.

But Mr. No More Mr. Nice Luke is not done with me -- none of that resting garbage will be tolerated.

It is time to familiarize me with the "route" (also known as "death march") he takes home from work each day. It runs up the South Hill at about an 89% angle at a point where the South Hill is seven or eight times longer than it is anywhere else.

I am being punished.

Each time I think the granny-gear misery must be through, we round the corner to encounter yet another, even steeper, stretch of hobbly brick roadway.

I try my best, first burning through all the muscle juice I have and then through the scant remains of my pride. But all the determination I can muster just can't get me a single brick past 9th Street.

Yes. The rumors you've heard are true: the illustrious Erika "Is-That-All-You've-Got" Prins was briefly (but only briefly, mind you) reduced to getting off her bike and walking.

And so, although I maintain my allegations of nerd-mobile-iness, I am left with no choice but to humbly retract the implication of, at any point, having given runs for money.