Rock my world!

Totally got rocked last night at my first group ride with these FAST guys. I know Matt thru church, and he invited me out to ride with his Tuesday night group. He rode with me for a while, and I was thinking "I hope I'm not holding him back".

Turns out, I kind of was.

We rode a few miles to this loop, called the "Big House" loop, and were holding about an 18-19mph pace. Not bad. I felt really good considering I hadn't been on my bike since Halfmax. Well, that didn't last long!! We get to the "Big House" loop and its about a 2 mile loops, in somewhat of a rectangle layout. A brutal uphill, flat, downhill, flat. Well, I guess the uphill wasn't that bad, but I definitely did not look forward to any hills after Innsbrook. The first loop, Matt stuck with me to make sure I had the route down (not that it mattered, it all looked the same thru my blurriness due to a practically maxed out HR).

Then he said "Ok I'm going to take off with these guys, I'll be back to get you".

He takes off going like 100mph, or about 32mph, but whatever.... I never saw those guys again. I got dropped so fast, it was ridiculous. And whats frustrating, is I was holding about 20-22mph (minus the uphill)!!! I hung back with another newbie for the night and we were hammering away. We did several loops (like I said, I couldn't tell one part of the course from the other) and finally it was getting pretty dark.

The guy I was riding with said "well, they probably left us, let's start back". This dude acted like he knew where he was going, I certainly did not. We exit the subdivision one way, and he stops and says "you know, I don't know how to get back going this way. Let's go back thru the subdivision and go out the other way." NEAT.

So we head back into the subdivision and met up with Matt. I knew he wouldn't have left me! I rode back with him and we chatted about tri's and what not. We parted a few miles from my apartment so he could go back to his house and drink beer...*ahem* excuse me! I mean re-hydrate as they like to call it.... I was definitely invited, but I was so hungry and just wanted to go home and collapse!

I learned SOOOOOOOO much on this ride. Most importantly, I learned how to hurt. Granted, I have a long ways to go, but since I'm used to riding by myself, I don't realize when I'm slowing down because I'm hurting. There were several points during the ride where I just wanted to lolligag around 15mph, but I kept hammering. Disregard the fact I was anaerobic for a straight hour and wanted to yack....

I will definitely get faster by riding with these guys. Did I mention many of them are CAT 3 and 4 cyclists?!?!?! I can't wait till next Tuesday so I can get dropped again! But hopefully not until at least half way thru the first lap!!!

Thanks Matt!