Best laid plans===
 

Normally have a group start from my house and it can involve up to 10 riders. Mostly fit but at varying degrees but we all enjoy riding. Tomorrow and I reckoned on 6 going so when my neighbour Nathan asked what time we were going I thought we should be able to find some one that can stay with him., Now Nathan is an oddball. 35ish and ULTRA-FIT. He is the one that wakes me up at 6 am in the mornings as he leaves in his car for his 2 hour session down at the gym. Winter and he can't ride with us as Saturday he plays Rugby for one of the top county teams and Sundays it is soccer. But Winter season over with so he wants to get out on the bike.

So reminded my Son-in-Law that it would be 9 am start and he can't come. My other neighbour Mick can though but can we take it easy as he found a new hill today and did it twice to get in 1 1/2 miles at 20% and his back hurts. The two mountain bikers are not coming as they are off road tomorrow and the few others from Eastbourne that we normally meet with were at a wedding today and won't be fit enough till the afternoon. So 3 of us and Mick wants an easy ride. Planned one to get in about 30 hilly miles and then come back across the marshes.

Then the bombshell-Mick has pulled a muscle in his back and doubts that he will be riding. So it is me and a rider that doesn't know the meaning of slow- or even medium pace. He will be at full bore for whole of the ride and he has already said that when we get to the cafe- he will not be stopping as he wants to get back to get down the gym by 1 pm for a volley ball match.

Help--

Any suggestions on how I can get out of this?

Hi,

a) Make up a injury or domestic crisis of your own.

b) Just tell it the way it is. Its not the sort of ride you want.
Nothing personal, a steady ride is one thing, trying to keep
up with a fit 35 year old hell bent on doing it at quickly as
possible is not riding with a person. If true, he will agree.

c) If you can keep up, up to the cafe :
More tactfully possibly just say your going to be stopping
at the cafe as you have no pressing engagements.
If he has any sense of tact he'll take it easy to
the cafe and then hammer the rest of the way.

rgds, sreten.

Dude, go out and give it your best shot. When you start to run out of gas let him go and sooner or later he will have to stop and wait for you or soft pedal. And in a best case he may decided never to ask to ride with you again so this will not happen.

I am sure that tomorrow you will have a story about how you crushed his sorry a$$

Put a thumbtack in your rear tire.Ride with him untill he pulls away then( Look Nathan I have a tack in my tire You go ahead ,don"t want you to be late for volleyball).Of course you just placed a hole in your tube but it was worth it.Now my problem a friend and I are riding tomarrow.BUT it is going to rain.I HATE riding in the rain.He called recently and told me the ride is on rain or shine.He's been looking forward to this ride for months,oh brother!

This morning and it was me and Nathan on the ride but one of the mountain bikers-Mick- turned up.He is about my size so I quickly changed wheels on Boreas-Adjusted saddle height and loaned it to him. He should feel honoured as NO ONE gets to ride Boreas but due to the number of hills and their severity that I had planned I wanted the TCR with the triple. Mick is fit so he could ride with Nathan and give him a good ride. Two miles of flat where I took the lead at 18mph and we turned off to the back roads and the first hill. They were gone but I was surprised that Mick was well behind Nathan. Couple of miles further on and Mick said the bike felt heavy-as if the brakes were binding. They were so adjusted the calliper and gave a bit more slack to the cable and from here on I was riding on my own. I told them to stop at a village where I would take a shorter route to the cafe while they took in a hill. Although I took a shorter route it did involve a lot of short sharp slopes so I did get a workout and did use the small ring on one of them. Not a bad one but 10% with a sharp rise of 15 meant that I could not do it in the middle 39t ring. Got to the cafe and waited--And waited-had a second coffee and waited some more.

When they did arrive they swore at me for sending them up a mountain. It wasn't but a 2 mile hill that is only 10% average but is an old coaching road where at some point it levels out before tackling the next hard bit of 17%----- They had to walk up half of it. Now you know why I wanted to use the triple with 30/27 as my lowest gear today wheras they had compacts with 34/25 as the lowest gear. They ought to have felt lucky because if I had stayed with them-Or rather they had slowed to stay back with me- I was going to go up the next hill that was 12% with a nasty 20% at the start. I had done this route last September on the compact with 34/27 and knew how hard it was. They admitted that although I had warned them about the 2 mile hill- they had gone full bore to it and just run out of energy.

So 26 miles for me at an average of 14 mph and 2,400 ft of climbing. They had done 31 miles but as neither had a computer no idea on their average.

So one lesson learnt by them. Any one can go fast but if you don't keep something in reserve-You are going to wish you had MTB shoes on instead of those stupid road shoes with exposed cleats that they were wearing