asmallsol

Yesterday I called up a LBS and asked if they had any race quality tires in stock. They were able to help me out and then mentioned if I ever want to ride with someone, they do fast group rides every tuesday night and they welcome more riders. He gave me a heads up that it was pretty fast and gets split into diffrent skill levels pretty quick. Sounds fun, I show up.

Get there, there are about 8 or so riders. Two of them are an older couple and the husband is real nice. I start talking with him and he says that he leads the ride out and the first few miles, is just a warm up. After that, they pase semi quick, and on the way back, its a hammer fest. He says he tries to hang on to the kids as long as possible and loves it. He gives me the speall about paselines kinda as if I am a newbie. I just kinda nod (I've done a few races, a century and plenty of group rides). He says if your feeling tired, fight the pain until you get to the back blah blah blah. Kinda thinking whatever, since I'm not too worried.

First few miles, it was just a warm up. We start riding at a leisurely pace. I take the lead for a few minutes and was feeling fine. The older guy says thats a good pase. After a while, he says "don't feel pressured to stay up there" and a little bit later says ride the line before you get tired. Since this was my normal solo pace, I felt fine, but rotate back anyways. The next time I get to the front, I step it up a little bit. I am pulling them along at about 25ish, and pulled for a good time. I rotate to the back, and the last guy had a bike or two length behind the next guy, so I jump in that spot. Pretty soon I am rotated back up front. When I finish pulling, were down to two others. We get basicly the only climb in the area (which is almost a speed bump). I am in the back but hammer it up (no traffic to worry about) the other two start hammering too. We aproach the top, and one of them says simply "c-ya guys" and falls off.

Me and the other guy keep hammering. We get to the top and keep going. We eventually get to the end of the normal "bike road" and kinda go slow through the down town to turn around. He looks over and asks if I brought along a puke bag. I kinda laugh and tell him I'm a fraternity guy, and we puke and rally. We get back on our road, and we start hammering it again. Were going 25-26, and on the descends I try and hold the gravity aquired speed as long as possible. We go about 20 miles round trip and the guy says thanks for the pain, and he had to get home. I was still up for more, so I ride for another 4 or so miles and then back.

I turn around, and ride back, and ride past the bike shop where we met. There were a few guys still there that rode straight back. The older guy gives me some compliments and says come back next week. He mentioned that after he feel off, he took a short cut to beat me to down town, and he runs into the last guy to drop and says that we had already left (and we waited for a few minutes for the last few guys we dropped)

I had a great time, but was kinda disappointed for my first bawls out ride for this area. I was hopeing for a ride where the entire time I'm dieing in pain but saying I won't be the first to drop, instead of having everyone else try and keep up with me. Guess I'll keep looking