Because I had Wednesday off, I was able to go on the 8:30 Tuesday night 'Escape from the Don' ride with the Beaches Cycle club. Here is the route:
I think my GPS showed something in the neighbourhood of 75km when everything was said and done. What my GPS will not show is that I am a total airhead sometimes!
Lesley and I had thought of seeing a movie on Tuesday after work and then I would go directly to the starting point of the ride. So I packed my water bottles (Endurox - a Recovery drink mix - and water) and went to work Tuesday morning. Our movie plans changed and I did remember to bring my water bottles home and store them in the fridge. Then when the time came to actually meet everyone naturally I forgot the water in the fridge. Someone else in the club - Jeff, if you ever read this, thanks, it was a life saver - had some spare bottled water and I kept it in my jersey pockets, but instead of 1.5L of water and recovery mix, I had 1L of straight up H2O.
I wonder, are my muscles stiff because of the lack of Endurox or are they stiff because we went so damned fast. Holy smokes were we going... well I use the wrong pronoun, I should not use the first person plural, it should be third person plural. Going full out almost from the word "Go" it was a case of thank god this isn't the Doughnut ride! I would have been dropped like third period French somewhere near the first green light and never see a rider again. As it was the guys did wait for me, more than once I am embarrassed to report, but I can draw some comfort from the fact that I was not the only person who had problems keeping up. The story that circulated that evening was that one guy, Laurie, had done very poorly - presumably by his psycho insane, holy smokes is he fast, standards - the previous Tuesday and was making up for it today... by killing me!
Never let it be said that the equipment makes the man though, Laurie is riding around on something that must be from the late 80s or Early 90s, it actually looks like his ride has the same gears as my Coppi. Although I must confess, I've been looking at Carbon frames lately... I know, I need that like I need another hole in my wallet, but damn if they aren't something to see.
I suppose I could put my Alloy frame with the old wheels and handle bars upstairs and train on it in the Winter and use a Carbon frame with new wheels, handles bars, and the Ultegra group the road. Something for me to dream about I guess.
Anyway below is a picture we took at Steels and Weston Road, I am on the far right.
As for the ride itself, it had a surprising amount of X rated content, while turning right we passed a surprised pedestrian who suffered a spontaneous bra failure. Further on some rather intoxicated young ladies were I believe expressing sexual desires towards us, but I cannot be sure, I was more worried about catching up with the blinking red lights off in the distance. I am also not very fond of night rides, it is better than skating, once the sun goes down the skates must come off, but even so, a good many potholes were experienced without ever being seen.
This morning, on the ride in to work, my legs were still stiff, so I decided to take it easy. Then some guy on a hybrid past me. Naturally I couldn't let that stand so I picked it up and caught his draft, when I passed him I thanked him for the pull. I slowed at a red light, and he caught up, he pointed out that what we were doing was probably not wise, we were rushing to work, I replied that it in my case it was especially unwise as I had stiff legs. Maybe if the guy was on a proper road bike the passing me part would not be so offensive.
Later today I am going to take my Roubaix to Cycle Solutions, I tried to remove the cassette, mostly just to see what it is all about, but I could not, I was pulling the chain whip and yanking on that wrench just as hard as I could, to no avail, hopefully I am doing something wrong and not just as pathetically weak as my slow speeds on rides would suggest.
One final thought, I was explaining my theory of bike genders to a guy at the office, he liked what I think of hybrids.
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