Group Ride

I had a chance to go out on a local group ride tonight. A relatively small group gathered at Outdo0r Motion a little before 6:00 PM. A few might have been scared away by the ominous weather which looked like it could dump buckets of rain at any moment. The typical heavy hitters were absent and I could tell by the bikes that the intensity would be much lower than normal.

The ride started fairly slow as we headed south out of town into a stiff headwind. A couple of miles into the ride a group of 4 broke off the front into the wind. I settled in behind the lead two for a couple of minutes before pulling at the front. I kept a moderate pace for the next couple of miles before dropping the hammer. I kept a pace of 18.5 mph into a 30 mph headwind for the next 5-10 minutes and near the end the last rider fell behind. I backed down the pace to allow Mike to catch back up with me and could see the trailing two not too far back so we allowed them to catch back up. After a short recovery spin I pulled again at the front with Mike holding my wheel. We pushed the pace fairly hard as it started to rain fairly hard, which felt good. I looked back and saw the two trailing riders turn around and head back home. We turned west into a cross-wind and cruised easily at nearly 19 mph. As we turned north with the wind our pace picked up considerably easily holding 25 mph. At one point I sprinted up to 36 mph and was able to hold that pace for a couple of minutes before backing back down to allow Mike to catch back up. A couple of miles from home a couple of the A-guys passed heading south into the wind. I hesitated for a couple of seconds and then made the decision to turn around and try to catch up to the group. I was never able to catch the group because they were working effectively as a group. I gave up and turned around heading back home at an easy pace with a few sprints thrown in for good measure.

Ride Details

Time 1:30

Ave Speed: 17.7

Ave HR: 155