Musings

Making peace with the roadies (somewhat)

Although I have trashed roadies in a few of my posts, I may be coming around.

Now, I’m far from the point from giving them a hug and inviting them over to Hak Manor to roast marshallows over the chiminea, but I may be beginning to understand their love for racing bicycles.

I put aside my distaste for these pencil-armed pedal pushers and hooked up with a local cycling club for a 32-mile ride on Sunday. This is the same club I have bitched about in the past but I have limited options. The tri club does shit for group trainings (one midweek 5k run? Puh-lease.) and the other cycling club is on the other side of town. So, it was time for me to suck it up and make nice-nice with the local club.

Much to my surprise, I had fun.

I rode with the B group and enjoyed the ride and the company. I was able to stick with the second peloton in the main group for most of the ride before we all scattered due to some long inclines and traffic lights. After a short respite at a park at the halfway point of the ride, I was able to stay in the lead peloton without much effort and even hang with the top three as we came to the end of the ride.

This was the first time for me to savor the draft of another bike and tinker with racing strategies and I liked it! Very cool!

We had a couple hotshot riders and a guy from the A group who had decided to take an “easy” day on his fixed gear and hang with us.

The big lesson, however, was on gearing. With Chuley having a six-speed cassette (21-11), I didn’t enjoy quite as many options as my fellow riders when it came to tackling hills or just even finding that right gear to keep my cadence in the happy zone. The training effect, however, of trying to push a bigger gear to keep up with these folks should be immeasurable.

So neener neener neener to you Mr. Fancy Pants 10-Speed Carbon Bike Owner.

Another observation is that I had no “regular” fuel prior or during this ride. I rode my bike 32 miles at a fairly decent clip after essentially fasting for 8 hours.

Ach! What’s this? Blasphemy? No Gatorade Endurance? No Accelerade?

Nope.

I just popped six Sport Caps and rode and felt like a champ. I’ll write more about these little gems in another post. For now, just know that they contain no caffeine, ephedra, ma guang or any other stimulant. Just a crazy concoction of Chinese herbs that help metabolize my more than ample store of fat and use it as a fuel source.

One final observation on this ride has me re-thinking my choice for my next bike. Should I ditch the tri bike and go for a pure road bike? May I want to enter some sort of road race next year?

Heaven forbid.

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