Tuesday Lunch Ride

Riders:  Sue, John, Leo, Mark C., Jill

Today we decided on the Coventry High Route, Sue is training for the Mount Washington Hill Climb in August so she’s trying to ride routes with as many climbs as possible.  This route in my opinion is the most difficult of all of our lunch rides, there are a string of very steep climbs in the middle of the route that can seriously kick your butt.  This was Mark’s first time on this route but the rest of us knew what to expect.  Mark is a new club member and Nerac employee, he’s got a shiny new bike, a great attitude, long legs, and he’s a natural on the bike – what more can you ask for?   So immediately I could tell this was going to be an intense ride, the pace picked up and stayed at a steady push all the way to the first tough climb.  On Tuesday’s I usually save my legs for the Tuesday night AMC ride but I decided to skip the after work ride and ride at lunchtime instead so my legs were feeling great (which is not always the case!).  Plus the humidity was almost non-existent and that was a pleasant break from the last few weeks of almost unbearable temps and humidity.  John scooted up the hill first (of course!!!), and Sue followed, then Mark, me, and Leo bringing up the rear.  I was up out of the saddle “dancing on the pedals” to borrow a quote from Phil Liggett, when I looked up and there was Mark just sitting in the saddle in front of me pedaling along like it was flat and not a nasty, steep climb!  What????  I don’t think he was sweating either, it’s just not fair!  It took me a while to catch up to him and pass him and I suspect he wasn’t even trying, I think he was probably being nice and waiting for Leo.  I told him next time to try standing and he’d probably scoot up to the top before John!  New riders are a lot of fun to ride with; they have so much untapped potential just waiting to be unleashed.  We regrouped at the top (there are several tiers to these climbs starting on Eastview and culminating at Coventry high school) then took a right onto route 31. This is a busy stretch of road so we single filed it at a pretty good push until we took a right onto N. River Rd., crossed over 44 and headed into the home stretch.  My legs were still feeling pretty good so I decided some sprinting was in order.  Sue and John are always good for a chase, they never let me get too far but at least I made them work a little to catch me!  This was a pretty entertaining ride as it was the day after the Contador/Schleck chain dropping incident at the Tour de France so there was plenty of chatter and heckling as we all acted out our roles.  I doled out Contador to John, Schleck to Sue (which she highly objected to!), I was Vino (love that guy), Mark was Armstrong (because he was just smiling, riding, having fun and ignoring all our goofy antics).  Leo was Leipheimer, steady and chasing, we made Leo work super hard today!!!  Sorry Leo!  So in a nutshell this was a great push of a ride with quite a bit of comedy thrown in.  I’m still smiling thinking about it… – Jill