They're Ready - 05-09-09 Team Ride

Yesterday's Team ride was a killer. The weather promised to be hot, and the planned mileage was long at 85 miles, not to mention the 5,000 feet of climb to go along with it. I'd missed the last two long rides while gallivanting around Nashville on vacation and I'll have to admit that I was a little worried about what it would be like to come back to that mileage. I made sure to ride during the week to at least have a fighting chance.

The route started and ended in Poway right at that little "Z" looking shape is to the right of the "56" on the map below. I forgot to turn on my bike computer for the first 8 miles so that little "Z" is supposed to connect with the arch above to make a sort of lazy 8 route.

We rode northward through Rancho Santa Fe, before looping back to the center of the map before generally heading west and north again the coast. We rode north past Encinitas and then doubled back and started heading inland again.















The group I'm mentoring, the B3's, had an exceptionally good day today. Everyone's spirits were good, and the riding was exceptional. Today was the day where they really and truly "gelled" as a group. The pace lines were tight the entire day. The group did a very good job of pace line rotations the entire day with all riders sharing the load equally.

We also had a lot's of good communication. Our group has had trouble calling out "pace" or "gap" when the line stretches out too long. Sometimes this happens when a rider rotates off the front of the pace line and mistimes their re-entry to the back of the pace line. All of a sudden, that rider finds themselves, 5-10 feet behind the rest of the fast moving pack. The natural inclination is to spend extra energy to surge forward to reattach to the line. For me it used to be a pride thing when I was learning the ropes of riding correctly in a group. This is a needless waste of energy and can sometimes result in 1-2 minutes of work to do. It is better to call out "pace" alerting the riders ahead to slow down 1-2 mph, thereby allowing the following rider to reattach quickly. This takes 10 seconds instead of 1-2 minutes of hard work.

The last part of the ride was an excruciating 10+ miles climb up Mercy Rd, Scripps Poway Parkway affectionately known as the "Purple Monster". This is real big kid stuff and it was coming at mile 70 at 4:30 pm when the sun was beating down the hottest.

Everyone put their heads down and just grinded it out. Pedal, breathe, pedal, breathe, pedal, breathe, drink, pedal, pedal.... You get the point. 50 minutes later, we reach the top, drenched in sweat. I tell you there is no tougher sport than cycling.

We gathered up and we looked down the hill at what we had just done, drinking it all in. Awesome. At that point, we had ridden 80 miles and had climbed 5,000 feet. The route around Lake Tahoe, is 78 Miles and the total amount of climbing is 3,600 feet. They're ready!

The next couple of weeks, we have a 90-mile and a 93-mile rides but none with the amount of climbing we did today. Just long rides with lots of saddle time. After that, it's one week of resting, if you count a 50-mile ride, "resting" and the following week is event day in Lake Tahoe. Very exciting.