I rode the club ride this evening, appropriately named "Taste of Virginia." I HATE hills but because my BF was ride captain I felt I needed to participate. I was rather concerned the first 10 miles or so for my legs felt dead, nothing in them and I knew what awaited me. However, after the first long climb my legs kicked in and I felt my strength and confidence growing. I started to catch up to those who took off in the fast group but who were slowly falling back due to the continuous climbing. Eventually I found myself with two gentlemen, I passed the one and the other one became my carrot for the rest of the ride. He was determined to keep me from passing him and I was set on passing him for we seesawed back and forth. We came to a red light and as I pulling up behind him he turned around and said "pull you big, heavy steel frame up here and trigger the light." That was all it took, for I'm very protective of my little blue bike, I love it. I know it is old (1985 or so), I know it is heavy, I know it is out dated according to a lot of the club members but it is my bike, it works for me and I have a great time on it. When the light changed I took off like a bat out of h*ll, dumped him and finished with an average speed of 15.6 mph. I figured with all the hills my average speed would end up around 14.5 - 15 (if I was lucky) so I really surprised myself when I looked at my computer (it came with the bike so it too is old and always brings comments from the peanute gallery).