Monday, March 12, 2007

Weekend Rides

For the first time this Spring (can I call it Spring yet?), we had nice weather for riding outside. It was sunny and in the mid-40's... a temperature that might make me think about the trainer in the Summer.

Anyway, I went to the Rhino group ride Saturday morning out at Stony. I had intended to ride for 2.5 hours, so I showed up half an hour or so early and did a solo lap before the group got rolling. The nice weather meant that there were a lot of people out. The group was 6 people when I joined up, but we kept picking up new people (including a couple guys from the Wolverine Sports Club) and dropping others. The pace was just a touch too fast for me. I finished my last pull with one of the WSC guys, and pulled off for good. So, it only ended up being a 2 hour ride for me.

On Sunday, I rode by myself around my house. I had skipped my speed skill workout Friday, since Sarah's college team had their banquet, so I did some spin-ups on the road. It was, I think, the first time I'd ever done this particular drill on the road instead of on the trainer. For the first two ramp-ups, I started bouncing at a pretty low cadence and felt pretty uncoordinated. The rest of them got progressively better though, and by the end I was doing about as well as I usually do on the trainer.

One other point... I had two sort-of close calls with cars on my ride Sunday. In both cases I was careless and left the door open for something bad to happen. This happened to me last Spring also; I think it's just because I haven't ridden on the road like that for a while and forgot my good habits from last year. So, for everyone else, pay attention and ride predictably!

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