Hills and Headwinds

It was a great weekend for cycling and Sunday's training ride on the northshore was well worth the trip across the pond to the land of pine trees. I was a little disappointed to find only Viv waiting at Starbucks for the drive over there, although I found out later that Scott had tried to meet us too but failed to locate the coffee shop tucked into a little building in the corner of the Lakeside Shopping Center's parking lot. The ride was starting from the little town of Enon, so we had a good 50-minute drive to get there. Why start so far away? Hills, of course. Heading north from Enon toward Pine there are mostly nonstop rolling hills, and this particular morning there was also a nonstop headwind. Our group of about ten, or most of it anyway, was clearly out for some honest training, having chosen a hilly, if circuitous, route of around 70 miles. After the first ten miles or so I knew there would few unchallenged uphills that day, but I was also trying to keep enough in reserve to get me through the entire ride without self-destructing.

Robert and Jorge spent a lot of time at the front keeping the speeds fairly high, and between that and the 25 miles of headwind that constituted the first part of the ride, a few of our group was already showing some occasional difficulties on the climbs. As usual, once we started doing little circuits up around Pine, I was completely disoriented, so luckily there were a few riders who were familiar with the route. We were stopping at the intersections to regroup for most of the day, which allowed riders to keep their individual effort levels a little bit under control, although I have to admit that even I got carried away a bit. I mean there are some sections of road up there that are smooth and rolling and fast so that when you're going hard it's almost like a roller-coaster ride. So basically there were some areas where going really hard was practically irresistible, despite that little voice of reason asking you how you expected to be able to ride home afterwards. Naturally, that took its toll on a few riders, but luckily there was a shorter way back to the cars, so after 50 miles or so we split up, with one group going to do another 10 mile loop and the other heading back directly. It worked out pretty well, actually.

When we finally started our long straight stretch back to Enon we picked up this fantastic tailwind, so we were just flying down Lee Road for the last ten miles even though by then my legs were complaining on the climbs. At the Enon sign sprint Keith made a valiant effort but was nipped at the line by Jaro. I know this because I was watching from a safe distance behind them!

So this morning I was glad to find that my legs didn't feel all that worse for the wear, and ended up riding the whole ride at the front at an easy pace.