[photos stolen in a most belligerent fashion from Kyia]I attended my first Tuesday Night Group Ride of the year, and - I gotta be honest - I was a little worried. Those guys generally hammer the hills and leave me in their dust.
Fortunately, they took it a bit easier last night, which was much appreciated. I actually tripled my longest ride of the year, which sounds impressive until you realized that my longest ride of the year was 48 minutes.
I was able to hang during all the accelerations and didn't even get dropped on any of the (relatively small) hills. I even won a couple sprints, which were uncontested for the most part.
With about 15 miles to go in the ride, I got a front flat. Ben and Mike were nice enough to wait for me. As soon as we started riding again, we realized that my rear tire was going flat. Since the leak appeared to be slow, I kept riding. When I got home, the tire was down to 55 psi. Squishy.
I came to a couple realizations during the ride. First, that riding can be more fun than training. Second, that I may have rushed my "comeback" a bit. The realization that my longest ride till now had been 48 minutes (due to the fact that my hip would get sore after anything longer), combined with the expectation that I should be able to keep up with the Cat 1/2 field...well, it just doesn't compute.
It does me little good to be able to sprint really fast for 6 seconds when I don't even have the fitness to wind up properly for a flying 200.
So, for the rest of the year, I'm just going to ride. I'm going to have fun with it. I'll race some, sure, but just for fun. I've got to get my fitness back up and the fun-factor has to be there, which it currently isn't. I can work on tactics and work to get in shape, but any long-term goals are being put on hold. The pressure is making this whole cycling thing suck.
*OK, technically I did get dropped, but it was because of a flat tire.
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