Anatomy of A Break (away)
I felt like him after my wet ride
I finally got to ride more than 50 miles today. It had been almost three weeks. The second I put my bike on the pavement, it started to pour. Pretty good clip to. With an awesome tailwind behind me, I made it to Lake Forest Park in less than 20 minutes (about 11.3 miles) which shattered the old record. I'm guessing the tail wind gusted to more than 30 mph at times.
So In Bothell, I picked up some guys from the Union Bay cycling team. These guys are kinda like semi-pro. They might get $15k a year plus race winnings and they probably have another job. But they do take cycling very seriously.
When you start riding with someone, it's nice at first. You have someone to share the duties of facing the wind and it makes pacing a whole lot easier. But after a while (unless you're in a race) you just want to be by yourself. Sometimes the pace they want is too fast or too slow. Or you just don't want a tailgaiter that day. So you think about the best way to drop him/her. You'd never want to just drop the pace, that would be totally humiliating.
I start by gently upping the pace when I pull. See if there's any lag on them catching my wheel. When it's their turn to pull, I carefully watch the spedometer looking for any slowdowns. Could be he/she just wants a slower pace- or could be they're getting tired. If I'm feeling good, I'll just try to ride them off my wheel. This is the best form of humiliation. Even though they are getting the benefit of having dramatically reduced wind resistance, they still got dropped. It's really hard to deal with- let me tell you.
If I don't think I can ride them off, I will look for an opportunity to "jump" and hammer for about 30 seconds all out. I just need a small gap to deprive them of my drafting benefit and then I can return to narmal speed. They will have to have a huge energy expediture to catch back up to me. (Read on)
