Bragging

I'm fairly certain that most people who know me would claim that I'm not one to brag. If however I'm delusional I'm sure we will all be able to read about it in the comments. But since I don't think that I'm a braggart, though I am somewhat narcissistic, I want to share some of the events from a ride I took Tuesday night, right after finishing my last entry.

Since I've been feeling as though I'm not quite ready to get out and race I decided to go do a hard solo ride. I have a usual route that takes me out to Saint Paul and back. It's a little short, only about 45 km (~28 miles), but I can add in a few good hills and there are long uninterrupted sections where I can really work on maintaining a fast pace. Now Tuesday was also a nice hot day, around 28 C (82 F) when I got back from the ride at 8:30 pm, I've said it before and I'll say it again, hot weather seems to work out rather well for me on the bike.

Anyway after pushing hard through head/cross winds all the way to Saint Paul I was nice and warmed up when I was about to tackle my first hill. One of the things that I've been missing in my training so far this year has been that drive, the desire to push myself harder then I would imagine possible. Well on my first climb I found that motivation again, it came in the form of about 15 other cyclists. See they had reached the base of the hill just as I was about 200 meters behind them. I don't know if it was the few neon orange jerseys I saw but something just clicked in my mind and all I could think was "This hill is mine". For those from the Twin Cities, this was the Ohio climb.

Now of course I have no idea how many hills they have climbed or how far they had gone already that day, or even if any of them were competitive cyclists. So normally I don't really care if I pass someone on a ride, for all I know they've just ridden a double-century. But when I passed the first rider as the road bent to the right he just said "Whoosh". Now I don't know about you but for me that kind of spurred me on a bit more. I mean I was moving pretty damn fast, I figure it must have been close to 30 km/h (18 mph) because I was passing people through the hairpin as though they were standing still. Which might have been why a woman exclaimed with some alarm "Whoa!!!" as I caught up to the leader of the group. I think I heard a few other sounds that may have been hushed comments...though more likely heavy breathing, but damn that got me going up that hill hard! And I must admit I was sucking air like mad and it took me most of the way to Ramsey hill to catch my breath, even then I was seriously overheated...maybe warm weather isn't so good for me after all?

Just the same as I was heading back I was still feeling damn good about myself, well not right away I had to recover from Ramsey hill first, but several blocks later I was feeling ok. Which is about the time the pack of scooters caught me. Now I have nothing against scooters, but I really don't like the idea of being passed by one. So those racing instincts kicked in and there I was cruising along at over 50 km/h (30 mph) in the bike path next to a pack of scooters on the road. Now this kept up for several kilometers. After a while the pack and I had turned off the road with the bike path so I just slipped into the pack to finally catch a draft. The funny part was how safe it felt there, like I finally had a cocoon around me to protect me from the cars. One of the guys in the pack said how impressed he was that I was able to stick with them at those speeds. Once again making my night even better.

So all in all it was a lot of impromptu fun. Now if only I can find that group again and convince them to do group motor pacing for my bike club...though there is the downside to that exhaust, damn it was nasty from some of them!