Unexpected

Just as I approached Carrollton Avenue on my way out to the Lakefront this morning I saw Bob zip past. It's rather unusual for me to have someone with whom to ride on the way out to the Giro ride, so I caught up to him so we could ride together. A little later we came upon Realdo as well. It was an unexpected treat to have company for the otherwise boring ride out to the lake. Being a Sunday, the group was smallish and although it's been a while since I made a Sunday Giro ride, I was expecting a relatively easy paceline ride. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way. Somewhere at the beginning of the Chef Highway stretch a few riders went off the front. The rest of the group organized a nice double paceline, with Robin keeping everyone in check, and for a while we started to pull the riders back, but when the break lifted its pace, the group failed to respond in kind and started to deteriorate. I briefly considered trying to make the bridge, but the gap was already too big.

So after the turnaround when everyone was going slowly I rolled off the front just to try and keep the pace up. When I looked back a few minutes later, the group was a good 45 seconds back, so I figured I'd do a little solo effort and see how far I could get before I started to crack. I wasn't exactly setting any land speed records, rolling along at 24-25 mph, and finally eased up when I got to the first stoplight. I looked back under my arm and could see a group coming up to me, so I eased up to 21 mph. Much sooner than I'd expected, I heard the sound of wheels approaching fast from behind. It was Brett and a couple of other guys who had pulled away from the main group. I latched onto the back and looked down to see 29 mph on the computer. Brett then proceeded to tow us at a steady 29 all the way to the service road. Later, on Hayne Blvd. it was again Brett, Realdo and me off the front (not that the group was actually chasing), with Brett and Reo taking pace and me practicing my emergency drafting skills at the back as they held the pace at 28-29 all the way to the bridge and still kept the pressure on until we were back onto Lakeshore Drive.

As we rode back uptown by way of Jeff Davis Parkway to accomodate Brett's distaste for the Carrollton interchange, I was noticing that my legs were really starting to ache. That was about when Reo calmly announced that he thought he'd ride for another hour or so. Luckily, I had a lots of perfectly good reasons why I couldn't join him for that. Although I hadn't expected it, Sunday's ride felt harder to me than Saturday's. By the time I got home it was really feeling like summer. The inside of my glasses was spattered with sweat, I had almost finished off both water bottles, and I was craving something cold to drink. There's something I like about that...