I need a training partner

I went for a ride today, took me a while to find my seat height, but after i did the Opus was amazing. It is geared for racing, which means that the largest gear is wicked large, and the smallest gear is for people who can climb hills and don't need granny gears.

So I was hurting through the one hill that is part of Stanley Park in the lowest gear the bike has, and i thought to myself "this isn't the pain i'm used to". You see road racing in large part is about how much you can hurt. In other sports it might be called heart, or the lack of "quit". A lot of racers i know just call it hurt. Hurt through the hill, hurt through the sprint, hurt more than the other guy.

When i was first learning to really ride i had a good friend named Byron. Byron would sit on your wheel for a ten minute hill and scream an unending stream of obscenities. It was amazing. It was almost hypnotic. It took you to another place. The pain became your house, and since there was no other place to live but your house, that is where you took up residence. You became comfortable room-mates. Familiar, and somehow friendly.

My pain room=mate used to be six foot four and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. He used to fill my head until all i could feel was my lungs burning and my legs screaming. My entire body rocked by the want to just stop, breath, let my tired legs and lungs rest. But that was the hill talking, that was the hill winning.

The hill didn't win in Stanley park today, but neither did I. My pain room-mate these days is somewhere just north of five foot, emaciated and apologetic.

I need a training partner. Someone who can climb hills faster than me. And if not scream obscenities into my pain house, at least give me a carrot and stick.