Rides May weekend of 13/14

[Crankin]

On Friday, Hirakikubou and I rode 35 miles (for me) into the hills of Harvard. It was a great day, and probably the last sunny day we will be seeing here for a week or more. Quite depressing.
Yesterday DH and I led our annual "new members" ride for AMC. It's about 22.5 miles around Concord, Carlisle, and Acton. Of course, it was cool and cloudy. I was worried that my base layer, jersey, arm warmers, leg warmers, and vest wouldn't be enough. So we give our big speech about choosing the correct group. DH and I lead the "faster" group, usually averaging about 14-15. We have 2 other leaders who lead a ride that averages 10-12? Eyeballing the group, I can see most of them belong in the slower group. I am the sweep, so I end up with the people who overestimate their ability and then get pissed at me when I suggest they pull over and wait for the second group . Two people gladly went off on their own, as one is also a leader. But one guy was just hanging in there, speeding up, but slowing down to about 10 mph on the flats. I get behind him (by then I couldn't even see the others) and settle in. This was after he told me he was "staying with this group," rode down the wrong side of the road and proceeded to ride down the left side of a busy street and cross it, to get in the correct lane . I yelled at him to please follow the rules of the road, but he just growled at me. So he comes to a turn that a lot of group rides make, and I said "no, we are turning at the next street." He replied that he was "going that way," so I said OK, you're off the ride... and i sprinted at about 20-22 to catch the others. I did it, but it was hard. I later found out that this guy does this all of the time. He goes to a group ride, acts like a jerk, and does his own thing. The rest of the ride was pleasant, with me following and coaching 3 others up the hills. They were slow-ish, but we still had the others in sight. All of them, even the ones riding behind DH had difficulty on the small climbs, which is typical for those who only ride around Boston... they just have no experience on hills and typically have bikes with traditional doubles.
God knows when I'll get to ride again with the weather.

[ridenread]

I made it out this morning for a 22 mile ride. I was having a great ride, feeling good, moving along at a decent pace. I made it up a very short but steep hill and needed to stop for a stop sign at the top. Could not get unclipped at the top of the hill and over I went. Last year I fell around this time of year and broke two bones in my wrist so I was determined not to land on my wrists. Not sure how I did it but I landed on both feet on the side of the bike and the bike went down without me. There was a man in a truck laughing very loudly. When I looked up at him he said "Sorry for laughing, but thank you, I fell in the exact same place last week". Continued along on my way with nothing hurt but my pride. About 3 miles from home it started to rain, lightly at first, the came down heavy for just a few minutes. I hate riding in the rain. But I was close to home so not so bad. Took a nice hot shower and felt great.

[emily_in_nc]

Yesterday was just a 12 mile market ride with DH. Rain was in the forecast, so I didn't go back out for more after dropping off the bounty at the apt. since I knew I was doing a long ride today.

DH suggested I ride with him out to the our old post office (where we still get a little bit of mail) today for the first time. He rides out there almost every Sunday, but I hadn't built up my mileage enough to attempt it before now. I (somewhat nervously!) agreed, knowing it would be quite a bit longer than my "long" rides lately of 30-35 miles. Whew, it was a tough ride! It ended up being about 4-5 miles longer than I expected, and the hills are much longer out in the country than here in the neighborhoods where I normally do most of my miles, so I felt like I was in terrible shape riding with him (he's done over 3K miles for the year; I've done only 600 something). So, he did a lot of extra loops so I could go my own pace and not burn out. I ended up with over 46 miles -- my longest since Sept. '09. Whew! It was fun but definitely a challenge. I normally ride on Mondays since I work from home, but I think I'm going to take tomorrow off completely to let my body rest. Even my calves are a little sore after this one!