Myself and JV have tried several options including having a second leader of a slower group and the club ride splitting off partway through but none of this worked out so we shelved the idea.
Recently however even more riders have appeared on the scene and so with the off road season faltering as it comes to the end of season I thought I would try again by leading a 'Sunday Improvers' ride'.
Taking advantage of this new type of sunday ride were: Andy T who has just returned to the club after a number of years away, father and son Nick and Zack Fawcett who are completely new to the club, Ivan who is recovering from concussion, Gareth recovering from damaged ribs, plus myself and Greg.
While waiting to see if any more riders turned up our main conversation revolved around all the various riders recovering from injuries at the moment with Pippa, Ivan, Gareth, Paul C all getting a mention. This rather alarmed Nick who wandered whether we were safe to ride with lol.
Riding with completely new riders is always a bit difficult as you are not sure what pace is OK. So as we headed down Westfield lane and into Sedlescombe I started slow and gradually increased the pace until it was apparent they were both actually stronger than I was.
From then on the average pace was pretty relentless for the whole ride, ending up being only 0.8 mph slower than the 7:000 harrow group although they did have to ascend 1,000 feet more than us!
For me this was the ideal pace as I felt at the top end of my 'comfort zone' for the whole ride. Gareth would be the one who would suffer the most having put a few pounds on his noble frame from his two week holiday to Canada plus recovering from his injured ribs
We were following one of JV's classic routes, 'Ballsack'. A nice 55 mile route with lots of rolling hills giving a medium hill density. Some of the local road surfaces are beginning to deteriorate again but we loved the roads around Brightling, Rushlake green and Cowbeech which have decent road surface lots of sweeping bends and very little traffic.
 |
| like father, Like Son. Welcome to Zack and Nick ! |
Reaching Horam we took advantage of the excellent 'Lakeside cafe' for a half hour breather. They do an excellent range of food here and rather than the ubiquitous bacon butty I went for a big chip butty instead and two mugs of tea . This carbo/ caffeine loading really payed off as I felt super energised for the last third of the ride , knocking off a few Strava PBs on the way back.
Our strongest riders were Andy and Zack who have similar slender frames and so were often leading from the front.
Good to see that everyone had the route on their GPs device as this makes it so much easier to keep everyone together and everyone can take their turn at the front.
We had a great incident free ride apart from Gareth managing to break yet another rear spoke on his rear wheel (this is why I ride aksiums at the rear) and proved the concept of the 'improver's ride'
As long as there continues to be a need/demand for this type of ride, I
am happy to commit to leading one a month.
Steve C
No comments:
Post a Comment