Club Ride Blues
I haven’t been riding, but wanted to do the club ride the other day.
I caught up with them halfway out. It was the B Group. Funny thing
it was the exact same guys as I rode with 5 years ago the last
time I did that ride. The B Group is supposed to average 15mph.
The A Group 20 and the A+ 20+. Something like that.
These guys are oldtimers, 40+. With a couple youngsters.
We rode steady, hard pulls, formation, at *25-30*mph.
That was funny. They did the exact same mode 5 years ago.
Basically 100% effort (overall) but not with a race-train mindset.
I think they start that pace after 2 miles and burn off
anyone who joins them who isn’t up for it.
My brother wants to actually ride in a B Group. He was
peeved the first time he joined them. (He didn’t ask me
about it first, coulda told him.) He got dropped in two miles
and all the other groups had gone other loops.
Maybe there’s an Honest B Group out there.
It was funny that the guy actually called themselves
the B Group the other day. B Groups even have a planned
stop. A and A+ don’t. —So these guys stopped and stood
for maybe 3 minutes in a hinterland parking lot then said
Let’s go. It’s a wonder what they’re up to. Well, I guess
they definitely have their own deal. But they should be
called an A+ Group! (Mr. Skinny with no miles didn’t do
too bad with these halfwheelers. I tried to be B, not to
indulge, but battle royale by the end. If they want it
I’ll eventually give it. Since I didn’t really know the
agenda, I let them spell it out.)
Typical club behavior? Every club have a B Group like this?
******
A Good Club Ride
Here’s a tip for better, more long-lasting results for club
racers using a method which goes against the modern grain
for ultra-serious high performance…
Nowadays when a bunch of riders start getting superhot in a club
it seems common for them to start riding on their own, to
start not riding ever or hardly ever with the rest of the club.
The club breaks up into skill-groups. To avoid crashes, to make
sure the best highest-performance training gets in. Targeted,
focused. (Buzzwords.) Well and good?
No. It’s forgetting something: the club.
Our old Lansing branch of the Detroit Wolverines used to make
sure that every Monday after race weekend anyone interested,
of any skill level, would go out for an easy social ride. Still
steady and controlled with a compact formation. But easy and
friendly. 25 miles. 16mph ave? (18 on the speedo mosttimes.)
Ice cream after! This was the most diverse ride I’ve
ever regularly been on. Oldsters, ladies, kids, the best and the rookies.
Result: several top women and jr riders, several longterm
racers who are still in the scene much later, rookies who went
to the upper cats very quickly. —All without funds or fanciness.
Just plain old clubbiness is all it took.
I suspect that a club with a ride like this gets *legs*. It probably
also does far better with juniors. I haven’t seen the area
clubs having such a ride lately—I haven’t seen any juniors—
I haven’t seen as many women racers. (The gals seem to go
tri—any idea why? friendlier?)
I tell ya, those kids (and everyone else) were happy
and proud to ride on those Mondays. All it took was for
the big egos to see the forest for the trees. Everyone
benefited. Morale was VERY high all those years.
Does your high-performance squad ride with the little kids?
If not, your club results will suffer.
*****
I went on a big training ride yesterday that had a nice twist.
The ‘old dog’ leader on the ride was a stern, sullen type and I thought
“Oh boy now we get a couple hours of stony grinding.”
But it turns out there was a friendly tri newbie who asked questions
and got answers from other riders (he had quite the wobbly
front end though).
And then there were a couple riders with
beat up old bikes with exposed cables and such. One was Euro
and one a kid. They were nice. Then I noticed that the kid,
who wore a flapping t-shirt, had no front der and wore tennis
shoes and the bike was an old Schwinn World ? with big ole 27″
touring tires. The old dog said ‘maybe you should get a front
der sometime’ and kid said ‘I really never use the thing, might
as well keep things simple’. Makes sense.
At the end of the long hard (and indeed grinding ride…steady 24mph start
to end, 34 miles, 2 min pulls, no changes…just the way dog likes it)
what was really neat was seeing the youngsters all cheerful
still. I was a bit tired, dead legs, miffed at being dropped
2 miles away and in posing mode. But the kids were jumping
around. They said ‘Now it’s time for some upper body exercise’
and started boxing each other. It was nice to see the ride roll
off em like water off a duck.
That’s what I want to get to: no matter how the ride goes to
have it roll off me like a duck: no problem: no big head on good rides,
no disappointment on bad.
I better get that way if I’m going to stay a fatso one-day-a-week
rider! I simply have to NOT get suckered into any type of image
worry or posing…the biggest evidence of which is getting suckered
into taking long pulls early on when feeling false-fresh…when I
know I need an hour warm-up, etc.
