You're killing 'em

Today was the first TnT training session for the century bike ride in Tahoe. The cycle team consists of about 20-30 people of varying experience levels. Christine and I are pretty green, although I used to be a really consistent mountain bike rider about 10 years ago.

Training was at Fiesta Island, a small area on Mission Bay popular for cyclists. There are two paved loops around the island with one being slightly over 5-miles long that is perfect for training. After introductions and a few basic instructions we split into groups based on experience and fitness level.

Group A is for novice riders who don't currently exercise regularly.

Group B is split into three groups:
B1: Some bike experience but not completely comfortable, exercise a couple times a week.
B2: Bike experience, exercise regularly.
B3: Experienced riders who exercise regularly

C's: Very experience riders with great fitness. Have completed other endurance bike riding events.

I chose B2 because it seemed the best fit for me and after that, we finally got out on the road.

The lesson for the day consisted of learning about pace lines. I didn't realize it before, but cycling is a real team sport. Riders form a line of bikes and ride in a cooperative manner for the good of the group.

A few basic concepts:

1) Drafting: The lead rider creates a break in the wind providing less resistance for the riders following behind. Riders behind the pace leader expend only 70% of the energy that the leader does.

2) Signaling: The pace leader is responsible for the safety of the followers. The leader is the only one that can clearly see the obstacles in the road. It is their job to signal or call out road hazards such as glass, gravel, potholes, pedestrians. Usually, the leader calls out something along the lines of "glass-right", indicating the hazard and the direction. Often they will wave their hand in the direction of the hazard to make it very clear. When you are riding at a good clip, you don't have time to say much more than that.

3) The pace leader sets the pace (duh). When the leader tires, they will drop to the back of the entire pace line and the rider that was directly behind them, will become the new pace leader. As the pace leader drops back, the last rider in the line will indicate "I'm last rider" so that the former pace leader knows when to fall back into line without having to constantly look over their shoulder. They will then indicate that they are in the line "rider clear!" and the word will be passed up the line rider to rider until the new pace leader acknowledges it by raising their hand.

4) Holding the Line: This is when the riders work in concert to use the overall line length and size to create a group affect. A driver of a car may not see a single rider, but they can't miss a line of 10 riders. The group of riders become the size of a semi and use their number to claim road real estate when navigating difficult stretches of roads or at critical turn-offs.

There is much more to it, but those are the basics.

I spent the majority of the time following along learning the system but finally got a chance to be the pace leader towards the end of the session. It was a lot of fun. I settled into a nice steady pace. After a good 10 minutes at this pace, Mentor DJ came up the to the front of the line, looked me over and said "oh, it's because you don't have bike computer". I thought that I might have been going to slow. "Nope, you're killing 'em." Apparently I was doing around a 15-17 mph pace when I was supposed to be doing a 12 mph pace. Whoops!

I'm going to try and move up to the next faster group this coming weekend and see how that goes. We ended up doing 25 miles. Not bad for a rookie.