27 April 2007

Thursday's group ride

What looked like it was going to be a 5 man affair, quickly gained participants and became a REALLY good, quick tempo, paceline ride. There's not enough light to do the entire Elon loop yet, but we still got a touch more than 40 miles last night. The wind was out of the S/SW, which made for a weird, swirly wind on certain sections. I think we actually had a tailwind on the way home. Either that, or everyone was strong last night. All I know is, we stayed above 40kmh on Clarkson, and it's a false flat. When the road turned flat and tipped downhill, RW hit the gas and picked it up to a tick under 50kmh. This put a few into difficulty and put Il Professore out the back. He loves it when someone hits the throttle after he takes a pull! :) We gathered back up and rode easy tempo all the way to Shop. Of course, the pace picked up after the light, leading to the bridge sprint. Osama (who has shaved, so we need another nickname) produced a stellar leadout. I saw RW shift down to the 13 and twitch, so I hit the 12 and jumped hard. Head down and no looking around produced a 70kmh top speed.

I felt pretty good last night and won both contested sprints. The first one took a little edge out of my legs for a while, but it came back around. I couldn't get my HR to stay high, nor could I get a deep, full lung breath, but it didn't seem to hurt me as I took my pulls and had little difficulty staying in. My legs could have produced longer, faster pulls, but the HR/lung situation was cause for a bit of self-preservation. ]

We saw ThePeanut out last night too. I think he's taken the hint and started riding alone. He says he's 'training with power' because his new iBike and training alone will make him faster. Maybe, but he still can't control his bike or turn...

Still waiting for parts from FSA so I can fix the Ibis. My crankset didn't come with some blue, teflon, crush washers and therefore, wouldn't tighten down all the way. If the washers don't do the trick, they're going back on EBay and there will be some D/A cranks going on. Shimano has the outboard shit figured out.

Riding this weekend may be an iffy proposition as the H.O.'s mother is leaving. I really want to ride Saturday, but it may just be a quick loop of the Fort when #1 goes nap-nap.

2 comments:

Joel said...

Did ThePeanut catch up with you guys on Meetinghouse or Clarkson? He came by me after I got dropped and tapped me on my butt as he went by—scaring the sh*t outta me!

MM said...

I didn't know he turned on Minervaville to try to catch us. He's a weird dude. If he tapped me on the butt, I'd probably beat him and leave him in Hopkins...