See the lonely boy out on the weekend...

With the roads in the greater (lesser?) B-more area still being iffy, the boys on the team decided that it would be a good idea to head south for some miles on the bike. The plan was simple, drive to Richmond, VA and set up a cyclist shanty town in out teammate Jeff's new house. I'm fairly certain that his wife had no idea of what agreeing to host us would entail. The short of it is that six smelly bike racers monopolize nearly every square inch of the house, eat every of morsel of food available, and keep her husband from doing work around the house while we ride our bikes. She was probably less then pleased to hear that I found out that I could throw their french bulldog (Monty) a good 10 feet across the room from a seated position. I'm guessing that we won't be seeing Jeff for a few weeks.

The riding was good. I met up with a local shop ride that left at 9AM. This required me to be up and about my house at 5AM, but I logged a few extra hours of chamois time by kitting up before I left the house; over all a net gain. After 15-20 mins the rest of my teammates met up with the ride. It took a while to work our way to the front but once there we went into a nice smooth rotation. Some other guys pitched in, but many were just there to suck a wheel or eight. For the record , I'm fine with this behavior. We all have different abilities and goals. That said, I have little patience for guys who sit on and then complain that the pace was super high, and then dropped off after "like 20 mins". Yeah, well get your ass up there and put in some turns, or shut your trap.

We logged 55 or so miles at a good clip (22 mph) with the group and then rolled back to Jeff's place to refuel. Then we sat in the sun outside of Starbucks for a good hour or so while Todd drank espresso and Steven's tire went flat. After caffeinating and re-inflating we put in another solid 40+ miles of eight-man double-paceline work. We were all pretty cashed and were looking forward to some good eats by the end of that ride.

Sunday brought warmer temps, and a more relaxed 70+ miler. Big props to Rick's buddy John who set me up with his bike for sunday. I had suffered a bike malfunction at the end of Saturday's ride, and would have been S.O.L. with out his assistance.

Overall it was a great weekend. It was nice to get most of the crew back together for some team bonding. Racing starts in ~4 weeks and then it will be time to get down to business winning races.