Definitely in the Pain Locker

I am probably one of the most boring 26 year old single guys on the planet. Instead of going out with friends on a Friday night, drinking a ton of booze and trying to hook up with girls like a normal person of my demographic, I go to bed at 10pm to wake up early enough to catch a brutal group ride at 8:30am the next morning. Yes, I know, I am lame.

After showing up to the ride and sort of awkwardly sitting around while everybody else has conversations and pretty much ignores me (however, two people did smile, so I knew it was ok for me to be there) we finally hit the road. These rides are sort of dangerous for me because if I get dropped, I have no idea where I am in order to get home. The first hour or so of the ride this past Saturday was completely pedestrian. People were chatting it up and we hardly broke 20mph. We went over the first climb as a group and I didn’t lose a single place so I saw this as a great sign and was pretty confident that maybe I’m actually gaining some fitness. About another 10 minutes down the road my confidence would be thrown off the side of the next mountain.

Like most group rides there is no explanation for how the people at the front decide to ride. Some climbs they go over nice and easy, some of them they attack like there is prize money at the top. Unfortunately for me, at the bottom of the second climb, the guys at the front all decided to show everyone else just how strong they are. As the front half of the group started to move away I put in a huge effort to stay on wheels. This lasted for about a minute until I couldn’t keep that up any longer and a few folks came around me. I looked over my shoulder to see if I was now the last one on the road and much to my surprise I wasn’t. There was a small group of six that had been spit out before me so I did the stupid thing and kept riding hard over the climb instead of sitting up and waiting for them. I apparently, have never learned anything from Bob Roll while watching Tour stages on versus.

I make it over the climb by myself and can see a small group about two turns ahead on the descent. Again, I make a stupid decision and decide to chase like hell down the descent to try and catch back on. For the fellow cyclist (all one or two of you) reading this you understand why these decisions were both stupid. For those other people (probably my parents), it’s a bad move because you are all alone. And all alone on a bike means you work twice as hard to do anything. About half way down I look over my shoulder and see a pink jersey catching me. At this point I make a good decision and wait for this guy to catch me. And, when he does catch me, he sits on my wheel which would lead one to believe he wants to work together to catch the group ahead.

Off the decent and we’re hammering about 30mph to try and bring that group back. They are always in sight but the gap doesn’t seem to be dropping any. I ignore my heart rate monitor as its telling me death is coming soon and try and focus on how great it’ll be to have another person in front of me. I pull for about a minute (which is a huge pull) and then flick my elbow for this guy to come around and help out. He doesn’t move. I get pissed so I try and drop him. This does not work. After about another minute I sit up and wave him around me with my right hand. He comes around and our speed drops by 3mph right away. I get pissed again. I sit on him for long enough to recover and then decide if we’re bringing those guys back I’m going to be the one to do it and Mr. Pink jersey is going to sit in for the ride. He’s clearly smarter than I am, but it doesn’t make me hate him any less at the time.

After I come back around him I put the hammer down again and we’re moving along between 28-30 depending if there’s a little dip in the road or not. Oddly enough, I don’t see the guys up ahead, but there is a big right hand turn that looks like its leads to another descent so I’m assuming they just went around that bend while my head was down. Immediately before that bend is a cross road and there are three guys on bikes at the intersection, but I don’t recognize any of their bikes or jerseys from our group. As I go through this intersection I put my head back down and realize I don’t see the shadow of pink jersey and I think I dropped him. This makes me smile. I take a peak over my shoulder, don’t see him at all, and realize a few things. First, the reason I didn’t see the guys up ahead is because the took that right at the intersection. Second, that asshole knew it and didn’t tell me when I was clearly not slowing down to take the turn. This makes me declare this guy as my sole nemesis in life.

There was still another group of four or five behind us and so after getting myself slowed and back to that turn they are just just ahead of me. I catch them on the climb up and ride with them to some place in the middle of nowhere that has port-a-potties so everybody stops to regroup. After getting off my bike to pee Mr. Pink jersey walks up and reintroduces himself like we’re old friends (apparently we rode out of Stinson beach together a few weeks ago. I don’t remember). I want to say something extremely sarcastic but instead I realize I don’t know anybody here and am in no position to call people out for anything, regardless of how useless they are. I say the most unauthentic “nice to meet you” of my life and go pee.

The rest of the ride was pretty normal. We went to this cool little bakery at Point Reyes where apparently every cyclist in California goes on rides as there were literally a 100 bikes scattered about this little place. From there a group of five of us took an easier way home which I was thankful for. Though, I’m learning that easier out here usually just means it’s shorter, but you still have to get over a climb or two.

The ride ended up being about 80 miles and close to 5 hours because of all the climbing, which goes to show that I do not believe in periodization for myself. I can write it for anybody else all day and preach the importance but I’m just not patient enough to deal with it. Due to this my legs are totally fried and extremely sore today. Oh well, they’ll be fine by Tuesday when I ride again. I guess no matter how much I learn about probably training plans I’ll continue to do the opposite for myself. I guess if I didn’t sort of like the pain I wouldn’t bother.