Originally Posted by DrPete
Well, that's the last time Joel gets any sympathy from me... "Yeah, we'll just see how it goes today," he says.
There was a great turnout for the ride, with a good 20-30 team members and a good number of new riders from around town. Joel and I took a couple teammates on the easier, more social ride so he could take it easy if he needed to. Turns out he didn't.
After some easy riding out past the Mall and Georgetown, we got out on MacArthur Blvd, where the ride breaks off into a hardcore group and a more casual, learn-to-ride-in a paceline group. I was taking the pull at the front of the group, and see Joel attack up my left side. I guess we're going, I thought. We give chase and it quickly turns into a 25-30mph paceline until we turn up to the climb.
Now Joel is quite the breakaway artist and an excellent climber, but I was hoping that recent injury would keep him in check a bit. Wrong. We rode the steady climb up Goldsboro Rd with Joel leading and me sucking wheel and working hard to hang on, as per usual. I did manage to make him hurt a little bit on the short rollers at the top of the climb with some hard efforts, but we both knew who was hurting more at the top of that climb. The ride then turned in to Bethesda at our regrouping point, a great coffee shop in downtown. We grabbed some Espresso while we waited for everyone to come in and kept going. The remainder of the ride was mostly flat, with some good fast paceline work and a quick detour up Ross Drive, where Joel dropped me again to take the hill sprint. Good news is that we both put the hurt on the rest of the pack, which is an accomplishment for my non-climber self.
It was great to see that my teammate's form was pretty unaffected by the crash, because he's off to a great start this season. I think he needs one more top 5 finish and he'll be ready to cat up to 3. He's a real class act and a lot of fun to ride with.
Good friends, good weather, good riding--a perfect day on the bike.
The stats:
Time 2:16:55 Distance 39.8 miles
TSS 185.9, IF 0.909
Normalized Power 273, VI 1.48