Sunday Group Ride / Monday Morning solo recovery

What a perfect morning! Cool, calm, and slightly humid. Did a quickie recovey ride after yesterdays team group road ride throw-down, where I chased National tandem TT champ John Verheul (he recently won the 90+ group with Andy Coggan) and another guy for 15+ minutes of agony towards the end. Good stuff, and saw (2) items on my PowerTap I've not seen in a long while; one was that chase - which netted an average of 360 watts over 16 something minutes - and that was after the peppy first 1.5 hours of the ride. Two - a solid 450+ watt 4 minute effort up 'Lamy Hill' after dangling at the bottom but steadily crankin' up from behind and cresting the top smooth and steady - where I chased down JV before he launched his blistering effort up the road. I had not realized the top of the hill was a regrouping point - and damned if I'm going to ease up / slow down the little inertia I had just hammered to achieve! Ah well, next time.

Other highlights included a good sized group - perhaps 12 or 13 riders - including an extremely strong gal from Los Alamos Irene (?), the aforementioned champ and local coach John Verheul, super bad-ass local Jim 'Waz' Warsa who turns the biggest gear I've ever seen, and Tony no Baloney - back from a fractured hip, Matt " I just ran two hours" Desmond, Charlie Two Jerseys Drysdale - as well as some new faces, which is always good. The regular Galsiteo Ride feels different every single time I do it, as the make-up of the group is always very different - which translates into a wild variety of efforts in the 50 - something mile route. We held a steady pace right from the start - hammered a sloppy sketchy paceline down to Lamy, turned onto HWY 41 and started smoothing the rotations out a bit. John and I acted as the fussy patriarchs, urging folks to pull through smoothly and ease off a notch once rotated. Down near the turnaround, one blistering sprint came off the back - I dove ahead and grabbed a wheel - but then noted it was WAY too early, as there were many hundreds of meters to go - so the smarter faster folks flew by me.  Ah well - next time!

We regrouped, headed out of town back toward Santa Fe - and it was on (see above chase comment).

This morning was a quickie north of town; up and out Old Taos Highway down to the Opera, back through Tesuque, and the nice climb up Bishops Lodge Road. Legs were not peppy - but were solid and felt just fine for the effort. 330 watts up the main climb for 8 or 9 minutes...

After a couple of weeks on the new road bike - a bargain basement frame/fork built up with SRAM Red - I'm hooked. The Red Cranks are the stiffest cranks I have ever spun in circles. The shifters are crisp and precise. The brakes are brutally powerful. The Easton EA90SL wheels are stiff and fast. I finally put the PowerTap back on and though suffered the weight gain, am seeing some good numbers (for me).

Little by little!