I did the shop group ride that 7rider does. By the way, where were you?!!
It was a tough ride for me. I did 83 miles yesterday. It was the same ride that I did 2 weeks ago - the regular Saturday N2 ride but I added on and did Sugarloaf Mountain with one other guy. It was only my second time going that distance and we both agreed that yesterday was harder than the previous ride. It was windy and since there were only 2 of us, we had to work much harder. The mountain seemed much higher yesterday! My calves started to cramp up about 10 miles from the end. I was exhausted when I got home. Then last night, I was a bike escort at a local 8k road race. Very cool experience for me since it's organized by my running club and when I used to compete, I did this race every year. It's highly competitive because there is prize money. You get the top local athletes and also some incredible Ethiopians, Russians, Kenyans, etc. I got the task of leading the top woman runner. I have to say that it was much more fun being on a bike leading the top woman than running the race and chasing her for 8k! So with that, I did a total of 93 miles yesterday and then the shop ride this morning. I was toast today. I was off the back of the paceline. Way off the back...and that has never happened to me. But then a guy crashed so 6 of us stopped and waited to make sure he was okay. Once I knew he was okay, I thanked him for crashing so I could catch up. The 7 of us split up after that and 4 of us went to do a very tough hill. Since it was such a small group and not much testosterone (2 men and 2 women), the pace was manageable after that. At the end of the ride, one of the guys pulled me aside to show me how to sprint. We kept going up a hilll and down the hill....up...down. I still have so much to learn about cycling. My excuse is that I am a runner who has a bike. All in all, good weekend of cycling for me.