It was predicted to be wet today, it was. We were all mostly equipped and it wasn't terribly cold so, all in all, it was a pretty decent day.
Some of my social bike group joined up with Portland Velo today. There were perhaps 20-25 riders and they divided by pace. We ended up with 8 riders in our group. I thought I jumped in the 17 group, but I guess I was in the 15's, and of course with the wet roads and reasonable amount of climbing they didn't hold that. Just over a 13 mph average was all the group could muster today. I was proud of my fellow "social riders" today as we were generally the first to the tops of the hills, and waited for the others. Okay, we had some issues too, a couple of times one of us would be out in "a breakaway" and would miss a turn, having to turn around and push a bit to catch back up with the rest of the group.
The one more serious issue, IMHO, was that early in our ride as we were all riding in a marked bike lane next to the travel lanes, running about 5-10 feet apart, a car pulled up to the sidewalk from an apartment complex waiting to get on the road. Our leader motioned them out and said "go ahead". A few of us took an immediate exception to that. If we had stopped someone would have gone down. We had the right of way, and safety would say to "ride like a car" or "control the lane", either way, the proper thing to do is what the rest of us did, wave at the car in a "thank you for waiting for us" mode as we pedaled by. The car waited for at most 15 seconds as we passed by then continued on their way.
I was on the verge of bailing on the organized ride at that point. I thought if the ride was going to go that way someone was going to get killed before the day was over. As we sit around at our "post ride debriefing" I find that I'm far from the only one that had that reaction.
Here's the route we rode.
The weather wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. After the previously mentioned issue early in the ride things settled down a bit. It was a slower ride than I was hoping for, but I am leading another "training series" ride tomorrow. Just over 60 miles and we'll be riding hard enough to make up for today! ;-)
The weather is supposed to be improving so we will keep our fingers crossed.
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...............Road Bike.....LifeCycle.....Total Miles
Today............44...............0.................44
Jan total.......501.....+.........30.......=.......531
Feb total.......614.....+.........0........=.......614
March total.....662.....+.........0........=.......662
Year to date...1774.....+.........30.......=......1804
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"I thought I jumped in the 17 group, but I guess I was in the 15's, and of course with the wet roads and reasonable amount of climbing they didn't hold that. Just over a 13 mph average was all the group could muster today."
ReplyDeleteAs a Velo ride leader, perhaps I can explain the speed issue - the posted speed for a group is the top speed that the group will travel on the flats. Thus, a "17" group is not intended to go any faster than 17 mph on the flats - and will obviously be much slower up hill. So an overall average of 13 mph at the end is not unexpected. If you want your overall average at the end to be 17, you need to ride with the 19 group, or higher :-)
As for the waving a car to pull out in front of the line, that I cannot explain :-)