Originally Posted by burnthesheep

Wow, I've missed some good stuff in here.

I think when some super fast rides get too big, but don't have some kind of "Darwin hill".........there's problems. And Darwin hill shouldn't catch a "sprinter" type out. Just folks who don't really belong.

A perfect example of this was the Assault on Mt. Mitchell in the first hour to 90 minutes. Freaking couple hundred people in the front group flying along at like 30mph average and not having to do any more than like 120w. All sorts of stupid going on in there. There was a dude off into a field at some point, he was SUPER lucky there wasn't a cow wire fence there. There would have been a disaster.

The Darwin hill doesn't come until "Bill's Hill" some hours into the ride.

Our weekly ride is kind of crap for this conversation. It's mostly a segment hunting playtime. The city breaks up the route too much to be similar to these rides you speak of.

People burn a match on one segment, but not other stuff. Some people will pull a long time, some not. One or two still try to "win the ride" doing dumb stuff.

If I want the ride to really hurt, I do some kind of workout at lunch that has a good amount of intensity to it. Like some 3x3's or 3x10's. This more than makes up for this not being the "fastest" ride in town. However, I've done much faster rides but always have more NP on this one.

Then again, this ride started out with the A's doing 23mi at around 18.5mph avg on about 60 feet per mile elevation two years ago. Now, we're at 20.5mph some nights. This is with about 30 turns in the route and about a dozen stop signs or stop lights to slow us.

I've done the route alone at 21mph, but that's because it was 6:30AM on a Sunday morning and I could just blow through everything. It's THAT slow a route during the evening with traffic and stops.

We're not on your level of "350w pulls" whatsoever. Lol. On the in-town ride I'll usually accumulate 10+ minutes of power at 350+ watts. Chump change for y'all, but plenty for me.

I'm kind of over worrying about what other people are doing. I just want a workout, to see some fellow riders, and share a beer afterwards. Oh, and get back to my car ALIVE.