I feel like I should put this is the new rider section since that's how I feel today. I had a shitty group ride last night. I was already in a mood (I've been a bit moody and/or depressed this week for some reason) and then being the only girl on the group ride (again) I wasn't expecting greatness from it. But even DH didn't wait up for me this week. Which was okay at first- I feel bad holding him back all the time and some of the other guys were hanging with me and cheering me on through the 20mph pacelines which were mostly flat. I just barely managed to keep up on those thanks to being behind a really tall guy who broke the wind super well. Tho when it came to hills, I was having some flashbacks to swim team- never making intervals and swimming 3 hrs straight- they'd wait at a corner after I'd huff my way up and just take off the second I got there, so no rest for me, which I was taking in stride, until we turned off to add a 'little extra loop' to the ordinary ride. Yeah, with one really long bigass hill!! Needless to say, I can't climb as fast as the men, but the normal thing to do is to pull the slow person up the hill by hanging out and breaking the wind for them. Which is what I do when there's the occasional slower person in the group. But maybe it's because I realize how much it sucks to be left behind. Anyway, it was kinda a set of rolly bits all going higher and higher up the hill, so the first bit I was maybe 25yds back, then by like #4 I was 1/3 mile back, then I get to the top of #6 to see that there's like 2 more and there's no one remotely in sight. At this point I'm out of blood sugar, haven't taken my evening anti-anxiety pill yet and have a major meltdown. So then I'm bawling my way at 8-9mph up this hill. What seems like an eternity later, I finally get sight of 2 of the guys sorta hanging about 20yds back from the rest of the group (like that was going to help), then the anger kicked in. I stopped myself from crying and just whizzed past them all, having decide they could all go to hell and I was going home. Which would have been great if they weren't faster than me and just caught up 2 mins later. Ugh. Makes me feel like a useless girl. And I'm really starting to hate riding. But I can't take a break with the MS150 less than 3 wks away. And DH said I should have said something- like I can scream 1/2 ahead of me for them to stop while sprinting my butt off up a hill and then wherever they'd stopped it was downhill, so I'd be fine then. I think it would have been different if the usual leader was there- he is good about actually riding back to the slow person/people and actually pulling them along if need be. I could have used that last night. Our weekends consist of not much more than being on the bikes the whole time and I still haven't figured out food/salt intake, so I'm alternating bonking and low salt headaches and just generally starting to hate riding.