Club Ride

Went on my first actual club ride this morning. Holy mother of pearls! Those guys can hammer! From what I've been told, a girl has to really work hard to earn respect from this group of men.

From the get-go we took off cruising at a cool 29 to 31 mph. I hung with them until most of them decided to run a red light. Too risky for me! The few of us who stopped waited together for the green light. As soon as the light turned, I took off. I wanted to catch back on to the main group. So I was pulling my little chase group at 28.5 mph. Apparently not good enough for a couple of hotheads who shot around me. At first I thought they were coming around to take a pull. Nope. I guess they just didn't like drafting behind a girl. They ended up leaving me, and several others, in the dust.

Finally, a nice guy asked if I wanted him to pull. "Yes, thank you." We worked together to catch back on to the main group. I hung with them until we all re-grouped and waited for stragglers.

More than five minutes went by. Where was Sling? Finally someone told me that there were two guys back there somewhere with flats. One of them was Sling. The group decided not to wait. They left, and I waited, all alone, for Sling.

Another five minutes went by before he finally appeared. We hung around for a few more minutes because we both felt bad about leaving the other guy out there alone. Finally the other dude showed up. We let him rest for a bit before we decided to head out again.

SNAP! The other guy's chain broke as he was pushing off. He assured us he'd be okay and waved us on. We continued our ride up Hobble Creek as far as we could, then just rode nice and easy all the way back home.

When I was flying along with the lead group, I had been excited to see how high my average speed would be. But alas, I had forgotten to start my computer until after I'd lost the group.

I guess I'll have to ride with them again to find out.

On another note, I totally ripped out my brand new pair of Pearl Izumi Gel Vent gloves on this ride. Nothing left of them between my index finger and thumb....nothing. And they only had like 200 miles on them. I wish I would have gotten a photo of the damage before I raced back to the PI factory store to return them. We'll see how these new Pittard's Leather gloves work out for me.