We lead the AMC Boston chapter New Member's Ride. We had 25 people, a lot less than last year, but it was fine; the weather was great. About 63 at the start and partly sunny. There was a stiff breeze, though, and I suspect, that turned some people off. I had an email from a friend who said,"it's cold and the roads are wet." This was at 7 AM and the ride started at 10:00!
Anyway, this year we decided to have 3 groups of riders, because last year, we had a lot of riders in the "slower" group who were riding at an average of 8-10 mph. This is a show and go ride, so I don't screen the participants. It was a lot of work to find leaders for the middle and slowest group, but off we went at 10:00. Steve and I ended up with only 3 people in the "fast" group... 2 women and one other leader. I was working quite hard as the sweep, to keep up, and about a mile before the rest stop, at Great Brook Farm, I slowed to rest, although they pulled in just ahead of me. One of the women was a triathlete, who said she was "out of shape." Yeah, right. She made me feel quite sluggish.
My friend, Janine, who was leading the middle group eventually came into the farm. She had told a whole bunch of her group to go ahead, as they were itching to go faster. So, this group, about 6 more people, joined us. Now, I actually had my "sweep" job to do. There was one woman on a hybrid who was quite nervous about a short but steeper hill coming up. I told her I would coach her up. I had to give her a lesson on shifting. Why do new riders never shift? I told her to put it in the granny *before* the hill (she had never used her granny). She made it up fine, but now I was really behind the rest. They waited for us at the end of a downhill. We then picked up a few riders from another club, one who was strangely riding in a time trial helmet, trying to chat up the woman I had coached up the hill. Since I had to stay behind them, I heard the whole pathetic conversation. Then we got to the cross street with my street. DH decided it would be fun to give the group a "hill climb" challenge. I was more than a little worried about 3 of the people, but none of them wanted to opt out. So, they all made it around the loop of our street, including the 10-12% grade. I did go ahead of 2 of the riders here, but the group was waiting at the bottom.
After this, it was only 3.8 miles back to the start, so the others raced ahead (it's flat) and I was bringing up the rear. All in all, it was a fun group.
Only one woman ended up riding with the slowest group, but I am glad we provided this option. But, it was a distinctly different group; lots of 40 something women from the city, a few dressed a la Sex and the City: tank tops, dance tight-like bottoms, Jackie O glasses. Oy. But they did the ride.
Afterwards, Janine had a BBQ at her house where we drank Corona and ate good food, prepared by her DH, who is still recovering from his broken hip (he's riding on the trainer now).