Rides on the Ides of march(15)!

[OakLeaf]

This was the first time I'd made it to the new consolidated Sunday ride, starting between us and the next town. There are now two groups, an A-/B+ ride and a C ride. The C riders seem to be coming along (although they're leaving the start time "fuzzy" which doesn't seem like a good idea - but it's their ride, so whatever!). But our group was a little weird.

Everyone was reasonably evenly matched and had relatively decent paceline skills, so it was a good group in that sense. But the whole point in moving the starting location was to make it halfway between the towns so people could ride there, and instead there were just two of us who rode - both of us from my town. And, to get there on time, I had to leave in the DARK. I like watching the sunrise, but not from in traffic! Luckily there's a MUP alongside the very narrow semi-busy road right near my house, which I'm not too proud to take on the road bike especially under those conditions. Goodness knows there wasn't any other traffic on the MUP, although I was a little worried about running over a dog turd or having a possum dart out in front of me, or worse, running over glass (of which there's a lot of broken beer bottles any weekend morning) and having to fix a flat in the dark - luckily none of that happened.

The "new" riders from the next town vetoed a breakfast stop, started off hammering, then complained that the pace was too hard and took a short cut before we even got to the restaurant. Since we'd got a snack and a water refill at a convenient store anticipating no breakfast stop, the rest of us rolled on by too. No mullet and eggs for me today.

It was an amazingly beautiful day, didn't even need arm warmers at 7 a.m. and we were back before it got hot or windy. 54 miles.

[Crankin]

It was 57 out when we got home from our ride! Spring has sprung.
I wasn't sure where we would ride, but I knew that I wanted flatter than yesterday. So, we did 20 miles in Concord, Bedford, and Carlisle. I think this is probably the flattest route I can do from my house. It's mostly on main roads, but still pretty. I felt much better than yesterday and my average was actually quite good. I improved my climbing speed on the hill home/driveway by about 2 mph from yesterday.
I think I figured out that after the first year I moved to this house, my speed went down, not only because of medical problems, but because I never do an "easy" ride that doesn't involve climbing. Before, during the week, I would go out and ride 15-20 rolling miles two or three times a week. Then, when I went to do long rides on the weekend, that involved 2-3k feet of climbing, I was fresh. So, my goal is to make an effort to slow down during the week, and try to find some flatter places to ride, to intersperse with my hilly rides.
Tomorrow is going to be cool again, about 43. I might just ride my Jamis to a medical appointment and go for a run.