With no nearby races this weekend, there was a lot of pent-up horsepower on the Giro Ride today, and although everything remained cool for the first few miles, as soon as we hit Hayne Boulevard the speed kind of went right though the roof... and stayed there. Next thing I know I'm in the 53x13 and the group is strung out in a long thin line about two blocks long. Erich's in there riding his track bike with something a 49x14 and I'm wondering how he can possibly spin that fast. I didn't know exactly who was up there driving the train, and although I had my suspicions, I wasn't going to be making my way to the front any time soon. I looked over at the rider next to me and commented, "I don't think they're going to be taking any prisoners today." We got to the end of Hayne and the group hardly slowed down. Then, when we turned off of the service road to cross underneath I-510, Kenny flatted. A number of us stopped, but predictably the front of the group was kind of on autopilot and just patronizingly slowed for a little while before resuming the hammer session. Once we got the flat fixed, we got rolling pretty fast, and when we got onto Chef Highway we were in full-on chase mode. I took one pull at around 29 mph and spent the next ten minutes sitting in trying to recover. Kenny put his MyTracks route info. up on Google Maps.
After the turnaround there were a couple of easy miles as people recovered, but we were well back into the red by Highway 11, and although there were a number of places where the pace slacked off a bit, for the most part it was a pretty fast Giro, made just a little harder by the hot and humid weather. Needless to say, I took it easy on the ride home.
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