YESTERDAY
Distance: 35.6 mi.
Time: 1:49:42
Avg. speed: 19.47 mph
Weather: 89º, humidity 47%, wind W9
Song stuck in head: Poison - David Byrne
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MRC Wednesday group ride. In attendance: Jorge, Rich M, Carl S, Stephan, Tom, Rob, myself and newcomer to the ride, Lisa from the NEBC. Late in the ride, we picked up Bruce and Jeff L.
Off to a very brisk start this week, staying at or above 21 mph most of the way to the Liberty Square Road ascents. About halfway up, Rich was zipping his jersey up and captured a bee as he did. He got stung just about on his solar plexus - OWIE! After a brief pause to make sure it wasn't still in his jersey, we continued.
I managed to play it smarter this week on the Oak Hill climb, starting out in front then pulling over to let the "train" pass me by. I think I ended up 3rd wheel to the top. We left Lisa pretty far behind so the regroup pause was longer than usual. It was only 3 months ago they were waiting for ME at the top.
As we made our way to Prospect Hill/Fruitlands, I noticed Carl bobbing up and down as he pedaled. I looked down and saw that his rear tire was pretty low. We agreed to wait for him to change out the tube at the top. Good time of the day for looking west from there as each hill seemed to be cut from darker and darker shades of grey paper, overlapped by the closer, lighter tinted ones.
We were back under way pretty quickly and headed towards the Bare Hill/Scott climb. There was a lot of back and forth on the way up but at the top it was Rob, Jorge and myself out front. We met up with Bruce and Jeff when we turned onto Harvard Road.
On Taylor, it was more back and forth with Tom bounding ahead at first then latching on as the paceline reeled him in. On South Acton Road, it seemed like everybody was positioning themselves to react to a sprint but nobody actually made the jump until Jorge did, very late on the route. I got right in behind him and was accelerating just as he eased up. I'll call that one a tie. ;)
As I decelerated from that effort, I was looking down at my front wheel and totally missed the turn back to the parking lot at Tuttle and so rode all the way up to Red Acre Road and got an extra bit of mileage in. I managed to catch up with Jorge and Stephan along the way.
As we rolled into the parking lot, nearly everyone else was already there. We managed to completely drop Lisa (our bad) as we came down Stow Road and hammered up to Taylor - she did not know the route and so rode back on her own some other way. Hopefully she won't take it as an insult and comes back to ride with us again.
During the post-ride "meeting" I got quite a bit of encouragement to start doing some races NOW rather than wait until next season. Vacation time is nigh so I'll have to see what offerings there are in September.
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TODAY
Distance: 29.5 mi.
Time: 1:16:19
Avg. speed: 20.51 mph
Weather: 78-84º, humidity 65-66%, wind ESE3-6
Song stuck in head: Beyond a Joke - Graham Parker
August mileage total: 367 miles
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Having shared my training schedule with Bruce and getting a lot of great feedback from him, I promptly went out today and followed neither my schedule nor his advice. What can I say: once I got going, I felt great and didn't want to poke along. I may pay for it tomorrow...
I did my "CC" Maynard>Sudbury>Stow>Acton loop, with the Boon Lake detour added on. I tried to keep an even, moderate-to-hard effort the whole way. A couple of times I eased up a bit and at others, I hammered hard up hills but over all, it was steady as she goes – but not leisurely by any stretch.
Tomorrow, the MRC Friday morning coffee clatch ride then off to the Cape on Saturday to ride with my brother, Doug, for 3 days.
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