Road Cycling - Fast Peloton Rides in DC/North Virginia?

There is a new Sunday morning ride sponsored by District Velocity. Link here (http://districtvelocity.org/racing/rides/). I've heard good things about it but haven't ridden it yet. Here is the current text on that page:
In February 2011, we kicked off a new Sunday shop ride. Comprising both A and B groups — the former being a fast and aggressive 60 miles, the latter a steady and strong 40 miles — the rides leave at 10 a.m. from Francis Scott Key Park in Georgetown, which stands across the street from the Bicycle Pro Shop in Georgetown. Anybody is welcome to join in, but come prepared! The A ride is not a no-drop ride — and yes, we’ve all been dropped from it — while the B ride moves along at brisk pace and regroups at certain points. (Check out the Garmin data and map for the inaugural A ride here.) Both are great for pushing yourself or gaining new fitness.

I believe I may have mentioned in the past that the Hains Point noon rides tend to be easy spin/social rides on Mondays and Fridays. That is not necessarily the case, at least for Mondays. The past few weeks, the Monday rides, while not as intense as the Tu-W-Th rides, were still hard rides.

I crashed out of racing last year (T12 vertebra compression fracture was the most serious part of it...), will not be racing anymore. So I'm not keeping the list as up to date as I would have otherwise. But I'm riding again now, so, if I come across new info, I'll post. If someone wants to take over, feel free.

I'll be in DC this summer and would love to ride in some of these.

I've lived in Boston and NYC before this and DC is definitely the best for racing -- and riding in general. You can ride all year and there's a ride every day of the week that's not far away.

Hains Point, especially, is like a cyclists' mecca for metropolitan area. Thursday evenings are a good time to go, if you don't like/can't hang with the 'noon goon ride'. But even the noon goon ride is good enough, b/c you can sometimes form a smaller paceline from those who get spit out the back -- and there are a lot of them. Today, it was really windy. The war of attrition ended with only two left out of an original 15 or so... (I wasn't there to see it, of course. Someone told me about it afterwards...)

There's over 125 races a year in the 5 boroughs alone.

The Conte's of Bethesda ride I mentioned here above -- I don't know if they still have it. The bike shop is still there, but the name has changed.

I did the PPTC Downtown Breakaway ride yesterday evening. It was great! Map of the ride is here (http://ridewithgps.com/routes/643622). The ride has gotten a lot more popular since last year. There were about 20 riders at the start; and the range of ability was wider, going from A to C. I'm a BB rider and was getting dropped last year but, this time, I was able to find some other people at my level. What's more, we happened to re-connect with the A riders at the entrance to Great Falls National Park and we did a fine paceline on MacArthur Blvd at 22-24 mph most of the way home.

Why is this thread in the 41? We have A whole forum dedicated to regional rides. Uggh!

You don't have to be impolite. I've been maintaining this thread since 2006 and you're the first to comment that there's a better location for it. I will gladly move the thread if you send me a private message telling me how to do so.

(5/20 Update: I have put in the request with forum administrator.)

The Conte's of Bethesda ride I mentioned here above -- I don't know if they still have it. The bike shop is still there, but the name has changed.

I did the PPTC Downtown Breakaway ride yesterday evening. It was great! Map of the ride is here (http://ridewithgps.com/routes/643622). The ride has gotten a lot more popular since last year. There were about 20 riders at the start; and the range of ability was wider, going from A to C. I'm a BB rider and was getting dropped last year but, this time, I was able to find some other people at my level. What's more, we happened to re-connect with the A riders at the entrance to Great Falls National Park and we did a fine paceline on MacArthur Blvd at 22-24 mph most of the way home.

fyi - Conte's is now Fresh Bikes. They have a Tuesday night ride out of their Arlington shop.

fyi - Conte's is now Fresh Bikes. They have a Tuesday night ride out of their Arlington shop.

okay, excellent! thanks for the update.

the sunday 10 am district velo ride is moved to 9 am, as i learned to my dismay -- at 10 am at the supposed meeting location... reply from web site administrator: "During daylight savings time, we move the ride to 9am. It will return to 10am in the fall." at least he replied quickly and apologized for the old info on the site -- relieved some of the annoyance...

7:00 AM DC Velo ride assembles at intersection of Beach Drive and East West Highway. Great googley moogley, it's fast!