Had Monday off the bike as a rest day, first day off in a fortnight. Felt like I was on "the juice" yesterday! Felt like I could of out-sprinted Andre Greipel and out-climbed Chris Froome!
Today I felt like crap. Dunno why. I had a nice pasta meal last night for dinner and went to bed at usual time.
Rode out (~30 mins) to the start of this morning's bunch ride (after driving to work), left super early as I thought I would probably be so slow and miss the start. But I didn't. I got there about 20 mins early.
The riders start turning up, including one guy on a dually 29er! Oh great, I'm thinking, just to rub salt in it I am going to be smashed by a guy on a full suspension MTB. Is this the lowest point of my cycling "career"?
Anyway, bunch takes off and surprisingly I'm keeping up without having to blow a gasket. I'm 2nd last wheel at this stage (out of about 40 riders) and the bunch is surgy and the guy in front of me is doing silly stuff like bunny hopping potholes and draincovers which is annoying the crap out of me but I don't say anything and just concentrate on not running into him or any of the obstructions he is jumping over.
After about 20 mins we get to the first climb. Only about 1km at maybe 8%. It's usually every man and woman for themselves here and I thought for sure I would get dropped, but surprisingly I managed to work my way up through the bunch and got in the front half and, most importantly, away from the bunnyhopper.
We crest the hill and there is a short downhill and then a sharp left followed by 500m of flat until another left turn and more climbing. Got on he back of a small group of 5 or so along the flat, they were actually going a bit slower than I would of liked but decided to just sit in and conserve my energy for the next climb.
We hit the climb and I start moving through the group again and come out at the top in the top dozen, so not too bad all things considered. I was giving it all I had to get there but the important thing was that I was going forward and not backward.
Then we roll downhill toward the next short climb. We come up to a roundabout and there is a black 4WD coming through from the right. Probably half the bunch goes through the roundabout in front of him but I stopped and then another half dozen or so riders kept going and eventually the rest did stop and let the 4WD through. No wonder motorists get the $hit$ with cyclists.
After that incident we continued to roll down the road and the main bunch had sat up and waited for us and so we all arrived at the last climb together. There were too many riders for me to make much progress through so I just continued at around 75% until we got near the top and the bunch had thinned a bit and then I managed to make up a few places but still in the back half of the bunch.
Then we have our final workout, a mini timetrial of sorts over an undulating 2 or 3 km with a couple of sharp corners that you need to stop pedalling for. I kept the hammer down and was slowly working my way through the bunch, picking up maybe 5 or 6 places. Managed to make it back into the front half of the bunch as the ride finished and people started peeling off to go to the coffee shop.
So all in all a fairly reasonable ride for me this morning (50.8km) considering how bad I felt at the beginning.