Saturday morning’s Tuesday nighter

This felt more like a tuesday night ride than a typical saturday morning ride.
Total Distance: 37 miles
Total Time: 113 minutes
Average speed: 19.6

Despite being sick for the better part of the past two weeks, and only having 1 ride in during the previous 10 days, I was really looking forward to Saturday’s ride.
I rode out of my house about 8:40 and arrived at the shop just before 9:00. It’s only a 5 mile ride from my house and I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would. But hindsight and all, I wish I had driven instead of riding.
Coming down the hill towards the shop it was amazing how many riders were already in the parking lot, with even more pulling in as we all sat around waiting for the ride to start.
One thing I couldn’t help but notice was the fair number of FCC kits in the group, along with a couple of NEBC kits. I was wondering if this wasn’t going to turn into an early season training rides for the locals.
Another thing I couldn’t help but notice was everyone seemed to be in pretty decent shape after the off season.
A little after 9:00 Charlie pulled things together, letting us know we’d be going around the reservoir by way of Pleasant St., to Rt. 12 in Sterling, through West Boylston, Boylston, Clinton all the way back to the shop.

Before most of us even got out of the parking lot Charlie put on a good demonstration of all the things one shouldn’t do on a group ride including pulling onto Hamilton Street against a red light, dodging cars coming at him in both directions, and pretty much showing a complete disregard for any and all traffic laws.
I applaud Charlie for showing any first timers all of the things you don’t want to do on a group ride, all in about 30 seconds. Well done!

Once the rest of the group got out onto Hamilton St. we made our way up to Rt. 12, and then took the twist and turns that would eventually lead us to Pleasant St.
I mentioned this last year, but it’s worth mentioning again. The climb up Pleasant St. is anything but pleasant, especially when feeling less than 100% feeling the after effects of the flu. And my apologies to anyone riding behind me enduring my constant hacking throughout the ride.
Heading up Pleasant St I quickly realized a couple things.
One is that a lot of the people on this ride did not spend the winter on the couch watching football, drinking beer and consuming huge quantities of calories. It was apparent that some actually train in the off season.
The other thing I realized was this wasn’t going to be the typical Saturday morning ride I’d become accustom to.
As most know, a typical Saturday morning ride averages about 17 mph, nice leisurely pace along a fairly flat route. The group spends a lot of time chatting, joking, stopping at a bakery along the way for a coffee, muffins, scones, donuts, cheesecake – seriously there’s nothing quite as good as strawberry cheesecake and coffee on a Saturday morning ride, especially at that place in Acton, although 10 miles afterwards you sometimes second guess your decision to go with the cheesecake, but the flaxseed muffins have the same effect on the digestive system so my philosophy is go for the good stuff.

There’d be no bakery stops this morning.

So back to the ride report, heading up Pleasant St I could smell trouble and it wasn’t from anyone’s poor personal hygiene in the peloton.
Some of the group decided to set a fairly brisk tempo heading up the hill, at least it seemed fast to me. As I was dying a slow death I was able to look up long enough see one of the culprits was Suzanne with her Litespeed and Optimum Performance kit contributing to the pace and stringing out the ride.
In fact she’d be a major trouble maker for the following 30 miles.
It was obvious she’d worked hard during the off season – the rumor floating around the peleton was that Ernie coached her through the Winter, as we rode I pictured Ernie standing next to her, stopwatch in hand blowing his whistle in her ear like Coach Troy from those Spinnerval dvds, shouting at her “Go Suzanne go! Only 15 more minutes left on this interval! COME ON, you can do it! turn it up to 140RPMs, I want to see smoke coming off of your trainer!!!!”
Ernie must be a really good coach!

It wasn’t until we got to the first stop at the intersection past Sholan Farms that it was obvious some serious damage had been done – it seemed like about 10 minutes before the last of the riders pulled up.
Thankfully we have Charlie with us to set things right. Like a good ride leader he laid down the law, with the exception of a couple of stops there’d be little waiting. At least he had the good sense to make sure people knew how to make it back to the shop before moving on.

The ride took a left onto whatever road it is that leads out to Rt 12, a right onto 12 where there was a close call as someone(s) decided to slow instead of keeping the pace around the right hand sweeping turn onto 12.

Once on 12 things got organized into a nice pace line and again a seriously fast pace.
Slowly but surely I found myself moving closer and closer to the front desperately trying to hold the wheel in front of me, watching riders taking their pulls and peeling off knowing my turn was coming up.
All I could think about was Gregg (or is it Greg or Gregory – the only guy in Massachusetts who rides a 14lb Blue with deep dish carbon HED wheels on a Saturday morning ride) and his yelling at me to make sure to hold the wheel in front of me - “if you don’t it opens up a gap, and then one gap turns into two gaps, and eventually the entire ride is screwed up and we might as well all go home because it never recovers” – nothing like pressure to perform.
I got into the drops and followed Paul Skerry until he peeled off and it was my turn to take a pull – it wasn’t much longer than ¼ mile, but I did what I could to contribute before pulling off and letting the group ride by me before jumping on the back.
Maybe because I was only at 70% but the ride seemed crazy fast once we got past Sterling Center and headed towards West Boylston.
For the most part though the ride pretty much held together all the way until we hit that climb leading into W. Boylston, and then of course things fell apart again as the fit people rode away while the rest of us hooked up our reserve oxygen cartridges and rode at our own pace until we regrouped at the convenience store at the intersection of 12 and 110.
Several minutes later we were on our way only to stop again at the Honey Farms about 3 miles further up the road.
At this point there was some frustration amongst the ranks about the frequent stops. Include me in those ranks – once we get started I like to keep going, the less stops the better.
We pulled out of the parking lot and made our way towards the intersection of 140 and 70.
It was somewhere along this stretch of road that Natalie was busy doing her job of pulling the group along and I was busy at the back making sure no one fell off when I saw it.
And he’ll deny it, but it really did happen.
The guy on the Blue with the deep dish carbon HED wheels let a gap open up between himself and the person in front of him.
Position is everything, how I wish I was on his wheel so he could’ve heard the expletives I was throwing his way about how he screwed up the entire ride by letting that gap open, but holding onto the back he couldn’t hear a word I said.
It didn’t matter, he closed the gap and then things got messed up at the lights, as we turned onto 70 some of the folks made the light, others like myself ignored the oncoming traffic, and then there were the others who wanted to live to ride another day and waited for traffic.
When we reached the top of that first climb it was noted that a good number of riders were missing, so again we had to wait, but for good reason this time.
Once we all regrouped and the ride got moving again there’d be no more stopping for a good stretch, the train went at a fast clip all the way through Boylston – things were really heating up.
And then we hit this spot about ½ mile before the Clinton line where it felt like going into the beer cooler at Kappys (or so I’ve heard) – Charlie asked me who turned on the A/C, but I was so deep in the hurt zone trying to hang on that I couldn’t respond.
As we got into Clinton I no longer cared about gaps, all I had to do was make it to the dam and all would be good – and once past the dam things were good as we headed down the hill and then pedaled up the hill where we regrouped at the park, chatted with some riders from Boston who were going to try and get up the backside of Wachusett, I wonder how they made out?
From there we made our way through Clinton coming out to the 10 corners, turned left, came out on 70 and made our way through Lancaster.
Everything was going well until the road opened up, literally – there was a crack in the road just wide enough to catch a 23cm tire, and it caught a couple, causing at least one person to flat.
As much as I was frustrated with all the stops along the way, this was the one point where I was happy to have a break. I was not looking forward to those 4 miles of Rt. 70 where all hell usually breaks loose.
Once we got rolling again there seemed to be a fierce headwind, I did what I could to hold onto the lead group which included most if not all the guys in the FCC jerseys, the guy on the Blue with the deep dish carbon HED wheels, the guy on the Cervelo RS (sorry I can never remember your name), the guy on the white Six13 (sorry I can never remember your name either), and maybe one or two others.
Slowly but surely the pace began picking up, I knew I was fried and I was going to be yelled at by Greg (with one or two g’s) so I sat on the back and watched the group slowly pull away.
And then I waited for the next group.
And then I helplessly watched as they slowly pulled away, hung out to dry all by myself I shamefully limped my way back to the shop.
Once back at the shop I realized the biggest mistake of the day was leaving the car at home.

There’d be no “Peleton Points” for me this Saturday morning.

Let me know if anyone knows how I go about contacting Ernie, I’m in desperate need of a coach to get me back into Tuesday night form.