Ok... so my bike is a Cannondale. And I sometimes call it Dale. Lame... I know.
Anyway....
After being away from my bike for almost two weeks I was really excited to get back on it this morning. One of the members of the NE-Tri club was kind enough to organize a group ride this morning. So that was my first outing on a bike of any kind in two weeks unless you count the one day I managed in Chicago on a stationary bike in the hotel gym. Other than that I had to deal with just running, swimming, and strength training while I was away. So I was looking forward to getting back on the bike and getting going again!
We all met up on the east side and headed over the Henderson bridge towards the Seekonk and Rehobeth area. Who knew there were such beautifull roads to ride on out there? Not much traffic, nice wide roads, and a nice variation of terrain. No huge hills to speak of, but enough rollers to keep it interesting and get you out of the saddle. We stayed together as a group for most of the ride and for the first time I got to experience what it was like to get "pulled along" by another rider as I was able to stay pretty close to Nancy's wheel for most of the ride. Pace was pretty light today so it was nice to get to chat with a lot of the other riders and still be able to easily breathe.
I was also really happy to feel so comfortable back on the bike again. Although one funny thing did happen to me. Which noone noticed... so hopefully noone from NE-Tri reads this post! At one point we took a sharp left turn and Nancy and I had gotten a little ahead of the other riders. So as we turned around to check Nancy saw Bill cruise right past us. So she went off to catch him and bring him back to the turnoff while I waited for Diane to come up and point her at the turn. So I'm waiting there by myself with one foot unclipped. And I don't even know how I did this. But I was mucking about with something and managed to put all my weight on my left foot which was still clipped into the pedal. And before I knew it I tipped over onto my left leg. I sprung back up to upright as fast as I could and just as I got upright Diane came around the corner. So my secret was safe! Nobody knew the better of it. Still it was pretty funny.
In the end we went for a 35 mile ride at just above a 16mph pace which seemed appropriate for the group we had there. Nancy picked it up on the last 10 miles or so and it was nice to crank away for a bit. Once we got back to the cars we stashed the bikes and Nancy, Bill, and I went for a quick 3 mile run to turn it into a brick. My legs felt surprisingly good and I had to keep slowing myself down as I was raring to go. But its good for me to do some slower miles with a group. I should really do it more often!
All in all I was really happy with today's ride. Met some great people, had a lot of fun, got to chat a bit and get a nice ride in.
Next up....
a 530am session in the pool tomorrow where I had better do my best to perfect my one arm stroke drill before my tuesday session in the pool with Jacki and I'm going to go out for a ride with Nancy tomorrow. I suspect with just the two of us we'll pick up the pace a bit. Hopefully I don't have any trouble keeping up, but I'm excited to get to ride with someone who is faster than me as I know it will only make me a stronger rider. Plus its damn nice to have some company on a ride instead of putting in all those miles by myself all the time. Which is probably a good time to also say that I'm really enjoying getting to meet people from the Tri club. Its nice to start building a network of training partners. Speaking of which I'm also looking forward to the tuesday night TT. Although I'm a bit concerned that putting in 35 miles today, and probably another 30-40 tomorrow is going to have a detrimental effect on my TT time on tuesday. We'll see. Hopefully it just makes faster!
And yeah... Damn it was good to get back on the bike!
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