My wife is the strongest female cyclist I ride with regularly. I can’t say “that I know”, because I know a pro, a one-time Olympic cyclist, and the most unlikely Canadian… The first two are no-brainer’s (hell, they’re stronger than I am). The third, well, Sue just doesn’t make any sense. She’s a diesel locomotive.
Then there’s my wife. That girl is cycling in rare air, let me tell you. Normally I hate the whole “it takes a village” phrase, but in the case of my wife, many in our club took to helping her become an excellent cyclist.
We rolled out yesterday morning, bright and early… wait, it wasn’t bright. It was sprinkling but the temp was nice and there was hardly a breeze to speak of. My Weather Channel app showed a zero percent chance of precipitation. Sheesh.
We had a slight tailwind on the way out, Jonathan, my wife and me – just the three of us. I took the first couple of miles and eased it up to 20 mph. Jonathan took the next turn and kept it between 20 and 22. My wife took the next turn and dropped down into her aero-bars. She was up to 24-1/2. She does that… and then wonders why the pace gets out of hand, usually blaming it on me. We rolled with it, though.
We raced into town between 20 & 23 mph before turning around to complete the first half of our loop.
Surprisingly, we kept the pace pretty strong once we lost the tailwind. The three of us simply cruised, a thing of cycling beauty. My wife would take one-mile turns up front. I’d take two and Jonathan, well he was serving his penance for taking too much time off the bike – he was taking three and four-mile-long turns up front… and I wasn’t about to tell him that wasn’t necessary. Heading for the home stretch, the wind started picking up a little bit and we were headed directly into it. We kept a great pace, though, and the length of the turns up front shortened. We put our heads down and reached for the drop bars for the last six miles.
We rolled into the driveway with just over 31 miles with a 20 mph average, right on the nose. I was happily surprised by the average. A little fast for a Friday, especially with the big weekend miles looming, but it was a really fun ride. The three of us worked together like a finely tuned machine and it was fun to be a part of that.
Here’s to the weekend, my friends. Ride hard and keep the rubber side down.
Fit Recovery 