B Ride 6/26/10

I wasn't going to ride this ride. I'd been up late with family matters and wanted to be free for...well, anything that arose, but things settled down and at 6am I was awake and figured I'd better go. Dave B. and his colitis problems were a possible no-show and I did say I would be helping to lead this ride.

That said, we all took off towards Colchester and I'll tell you, we had a great ride. Every time Dave turned back to wait for me on the hills, I was there. The climbs up to Columbia Center usually set me back...maybe it was the combination of lack of sleep, little food and residual adrenalin from the night before, but I was hanging in there!

Welcome additions were Pete L., who pulled me through a B+ ride a couple of years ago in Hanover, Amy...always a pleasure, and running girl Dianna...who's RP had gone off, I don't know where.

Donna and Eric bailed early...not exactly sure why, but heard that Donna wasn't feeling well. Hope it's only temporary... Eric has a computer the size of a 1980's cordless phone and he could have told us elevation and all that good stuff ...they were missed.

We pulled into Starbucks amazed at our speed avg. High 14's...very cool! Dave figured we'd probably bonk a bit heading back, we'd been riding strong all morning. We ate, rubbed shoulders with the A riders...I believe they were heading toward the CT river, something about a ferry...and headed down Old Rt 2.

We talked about a 9 rider pace line down the highway...some figured they wouldn't be able to hang on, so we morphed into mini pacelines of 3 and proceeded to roll. I was VERY fortunate to hook up with Dianna, who loves to pull. Don, she and me avg around 22mph for the 8mile ride to Bozrah. Ahead of us were Dave, Amy and Pete; not far behind were Terry, Brian and Doug.

Our avg mph were still PR high for many of us...truly, we could not believe we were doing this type of riding! After the ride from Colchester, we were now +15avg and it never went below that for the remainder of the ride. Under The Mountain Rd, with it's beautiful cemetery and cornfields and deep, cool shadows...such an apt name for this road, is a favorite of Dianna's.

We took Briggs Road in order to stay off Rt 32N. It was getting hot and traffic was heavy. I still felt strong and stayed in the middle of the group most of the time. When we hit the shade up on top of Franklin...no idea what road but scenic vistas all around, Don wowwed us with his 'wringing out his helmet trick' that was pretty gross. We rested a bit and finished up the ride to S. Windham and home with Bergmann pulling three of us up 203. We caught up with Don and Doug and I showed off by powering past them....yeah, and Dave 'my calfs are bigger than yours' Bergmann blew by me! Well, we all met up at the school and compared avg mph. 15.6-16.2 was the range with yours truly having 15.6.

Not that it's about the numbers...but it was good to have something to focus on other than the stresses and dramas and disappointments in life, or humdrum weekend chores that all of us deal with daily. Reality creeps in when the ride is over....it's one of the reasons to ride.