This morning's ad hoc Thanksgiving Day ride certainly didn't turn out the way I'd been expecting. Mignon has sent out an email earlier in the week suggesting a nice civilized 7:15 am start time, to which she'd received maybe two replies. I thought maybe we'd have a nice little group of six or seven, but apparently everyone got his turkey into the oven early today because when I arrived to meet the group up on the levee there were already fifteen or so there. A cool front had come though last night, leaving us with a clear blue sky and somewhat gusty northeast wind. By the time we rolled out and met up with some more riders at the playground, our group must have numbered at least twenty-five.
There was a pretty good little tailwind that came and went as the river wound its way toward Ormond, and although I'd expected a nice conversational pace, I soon found myself down on the drops in the big ring as the pace hovered in the 26-29 mph range. There were more than a couple of riders who were determined to get in a good workout today. I was trying to stay near the front and in the rotation for a couple of reasons, one of which was the occasional crosswind section that would leave twenty riders lined up along the edge of the asphalt pretending they were getting a draft. It was a good day for the power riders. Brady filtered up to the front at one point and pulled the whole bunch along at 28 mph for what seemed like miles. He wasn't the only one, either. Anyway, by the time we were past The Dip, things seemed to have settled down a bit. I don't know how many were left in the front group by then, but I guess we must have broken up into two or three groups by then. Eventually, Woody, who had been cruising along in the middle of the group, must have gotten frustrated with the "inconsistent" pace, which is to say there was a lot of surging going on, and blew past the paceline. Of course, the guys at the front weren't going to let that stand, and next thing I know there are gaps all over the place. When Scott blew up ahead of me I made a half-hearted effort to bridge. Up ahead I could see that the front group had eased up a bit, but just then Rob jumped past me and motored up to them. I thought, "This can't be good." Sure enough, Rob went to the front and when I saw the riders at the back come off their saddles to accelerate I knew my chase was over.
So that was the ride on the way out to the turnaround. The ride back wasn't a whole lot different except that we had a lot more headwind than tailwind, and we spent the first five miles chasing Woody and someone else who had slipped off the front. On the plus side, I wasn't feeling all that bad. The chest congestion is finally starting to clear up, so although I'm feeling a bit out of shape, at least I'm not afraid to make a few hard efforts. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Maybe just the usual morning ride on the levee unless someone suggests something more interesting. Rob was talking about some guys planning to ride out to Slidell, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to jump into what would probably be a 90 mile day right now.
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