Sunday - Season has now Blasted Off!

I've been waiting a while for a real season opener ride, and today I got my fill.  I met up with about 10 others at the Cabin Cafe, and we set our sites on Bragg Creek.  Shawn, Dallas, Dwayne Ellis, 3 Synergy folk, and a few other I'm sure I've now forgotten in my exhausted state.  In the parking lot as we were set to leave I realized I'd left my fuel for 5 hours of planned riding neatly stacked on my kitchen counter.  Geez.

I felt sluggish off the start.  I don't think my dinner last night absorbed all that well, and I wasn't feeling too perky.  I bummed a gel of Shawn so I could stop whining.  

Once we got to the hills on Lower Springbank, I felt ok.  I could climb and hold my spot rather than drifting back.  On the "third hill" I was rather happy/surprised with the ratio of riders in front/behind over the top.  Felt good.

As we turned south towards Bragg, my legs felt good.  Pulled up the incline and back down, then went to the back to converse for a while.  Once we got into the trees, Dallas and I thought it'd be nice to pick up the pace a little, so we each offered what we could... Dallas supplying more naturally.  At about Redwood Meadows, it was pretty much all out.  I was doing a pull, and Dallas whispered that next pull he was going to attack.  I slowed up my pull so I'd have a chance of going along, and we just kept trading off as long as we could.  As we neared the 1km to go sign, half the group was still there, along with Synergy guys.  Side note here - around this point someone rode on from the back.  I heard someone say "pick it up, some guy rode on from behind", but obviously anyone who rode on from behind wasn't going to be dropped now that they were in the group.  Any guesses?  Pat Dodge, just out making his crank set cry for mercy.  That guy is a machine.  

This set us up for a little fun.  I'll admit right up front that Sunday tactics and actual race tactics are fairly different in my view.  Racing is to attempt to win.  Sunday group ride is to clobber yourself senseless to be stronger another day.  Dallas and I were clobbering ourselves.  The Synergy fellows, being from a track oriented club, were setting themselves up for the sprint.  I have nothing against them or that tactic, I just wanted to see the game play out differently.  As they were tucked in behind the Nth Dallas pull, sucking wheel, I recalled back to a ride where I was hanging on for mercy back when I met Dallas.  The part that stuck in my mind is chronicled here - the short of which is that after drag racing anyone left who would dare try to pull through on the end of a Tuesday Night Hammer, we resign ourselves to sucking wheel to recoup enough energy to mount the final attack.  Naturally the guy on the front knows its coming once everyone abandons trying to pull through.  What does he do?  Slow down and half pedal, saving some juice?  Nope, he hammers on, and when the road turns upward giving the guys behind a perfect spot to attack, he yells "BRING IT ON MOTHERFUCKERS" and fights not to give up an inch.  I love Tuesday Night Hammers.

So back from this digression, two guys are setting themselves up to sprint off Dallas' wheel, after we'd been pushing the pace.  I feel obliged to yell "ATTACK OFF THE FRONT YOU FUCKING PUSSIES".  I'm also happy to report that they did just that.  It was melee from there on in, not much strategy, all brawn.  Bunnin managed to sneak up from somewhere to win.  All's well, there's nothing like a Sunday ride!  

We refueled at Cinnamon Spoon, and I suspect the Synergy guys weren't holding the attack thing against me, everyone seemed to be having a good time, plus there were hoards of other cyclists out.  When it was time to start riding back, Dallas and I decided instead of coasting along with the group, we'd hammer until we saw the deadgoat group coming out that had left Westhills at 11.  Wasn't long and we saw the whole crew looking sharp with the new team kit.  We joined in, and the chats I had revealed the following:  Lonn was hammering the hills, Trish was riding second wheel and apparently not breaking a sweat, and from the rest of the day, I'll just surmise that Pat and Geoff were saving up to unleash later.  We did a second coffee stop in Bragg after Geoff won the sprint.

Gerry flatted, but nobody had noticed, so he rolled in 5 minutes later.  5 minutes after him, Devin rolled in, freshly off parenting duty.

We rode back north, at a pretty meaningful pace.  Guys were cold after a flat so everyone wanted to work hard.  A bunch turned back on Lower Springbank, and 6 of us went north, supposedly to turn on Airport road - Dallas, Devin, Pat, Geoff, Lonn and I.  I strugged up the hill, only to find that turning on Airport wasn't going to happen, it was off to Cochrane at full blast.  Devin was demonstrating the benefits of his recent Uranium diet on his pulls, from the outside he was showing no fatigue on the hammer ride even though he took Thursday and Friday off to put in big mileage, and had done the same on Saturday.  Geoff Clark was shifting between "hammer" and "giver" depending on the grade and headwind.  I was hanging on by a thread, and Dallas was still finding the energy to mix it up at the front.  Pat was fine, his 'cross bike does have a carbon fork on it, so it's fast enough to blaze all over the roads.  Lonn was making me hurt every chance he got.

After the third stop of the day, this time at Cochrane coffee traders, we warmed up to attack the Cochrane Hill.  After about 16 meters of warmup, Dallas sees some Fred half way up the bottom of the climb and takes off for the kill.  I settle into a warmup pace because my legs feel like crap after the 5th cooldown of the day (3 shop stops, 2 flat stops).  I don't even know who made it to the top first, either Dallas or Devin.  I was behind Geoff and it took me 2/3 of the climb to reel him in, but I couldn't catch Lonn.  

From there, it was just hobble home along TWP 262.  Rest of the guys still had jets, it seemed like Pat and I were feeling similar and we traded pulls a lot.  It was almost odd to see a guy come by and slide gently in front on his pulls, offering you that helping hand, after every other wheel I chased was tearing up pavement with a vengeance.

I was glad to make my way home.  All in, my SRM tells me this is the highest power output I've done on a ride - the "normalized" power was 299W for 4.5 hours... normalized I think is just it's way of doing an average without coasting included.  I'm bagged, but I'm happy.  I think my fitness is improving, but the funny thing is that so is everyone else's.  I'm still hanging on tooth and nail just to ride with my buddies.