Thursday's Ride (8-4)

Well, I felt better on today's ride than I have on any ride in the past few weeks!

There are probably a couple of things that factored into that. The first thing is that I just had a brand new Ultegera 10-speed groupo put on my bike. The guys over at The Bike Route did a great job, they stripped the entire bike down to nothing, cleaned it up, put a coat of wax on it, installed all the new stuff (the groupo plus Dura-Ace cables for both the shifters and the brakes...and an upgraded Dura-Ace front derailer) and now it's like a brand new bike. The second thing was that the pace was a bit more civil in the early parts of the ride (by civil, I mean an average of 22 instead of 24 or 25). That left me with some more gusto in the later parts of the ride.

Anyway, we did the same ole 40-miler, there were about 9 of us at the start and we pretty much stayed together for the bulk of the route. The final big hill coming out of Alachua put the hurt on a couple of guys, who were content to finish the ride at their own pace. The weather threatened the whole time, but never dropped more than a few sprinkles on us (thank goodness, cause I didn't want my shiney bike to get gritty).

Huan seemed to be riding strong, always raising the pace when his pull came around. I finally felt like I was able to contribute on my pulls and usually had enough in the tank for a slight increase in speed down twords the end. Six of us came to the bottom of Millhopper together; Joe, Mike R., Susan, Anthony, Huan and myself. We rode hard but stayed together, even over the final two climbs. Mike R. dropped somewhere after the last climb-so we were down to five.

I was feeling good, my bike was smooth and I was looking forward to the sprint. I was hoping that Joe would set me up with another killer lead-out as this was to be his last tue/thur ride before going back up to Tenn. for school. Susan, who is riding as strong as any of us, pulled through and I hit the front with about a mile or two left. I kicked the pace up slightly and then pulled off. While Huan was pulling on the front, Joe moved around me so we would be in line for the sprint. We were still about 2 km from the line and I knew that Joe had a lot of leading out to do. Since I was feeling pretty strong, I decided to jump way earlier than I normally would so Joe wouldn't have to kill himself. I had a good pop of speed and cranked it up to 33-34 mph. At first glance I didn't see a wheel behind me until about 50 meters to the line. I thought it was Huan trying to come around, but as it turned out...Anthony had caught my wheel and got me at the line.

Even though I felt stronger than I have in a while, I still only got 2nd. I should have probably let Joe lead it out a little longer before I jumped (Joe said afterwards that he still had some juice left). But non-the-less, "mad-props" to Anthony on a killer sprint...he deserved that one!