Today's ride was traditional and leisurely, and boy was it different than last week's ride which was a moderate pace. The technical ability of the riders was also very different and required an adjustment on my part as well. Last week's group was much more advanced and everyone was clipped into their pedals, signalling, and had great bike handling skills. I would say with that group my handling skills were at the low end, so I had to ride more aggressively and with much more confidence.
Today the group was much less technical, most of them were not clipped in, and when we'd hit a hill, there were dangerous pile-ups. It really required me to focus on my handling, which after taking another spill due to stopping and leaning to the side I was still clipped in on (yep, again...3rd time now), it made me very anxious and cautious. And as it turns out, the slower you go, the more challenging it is to control your bike. There was a girl about my age there who does triathlons and century rides, so we were talking about how this really required us to practice our bike handling.
The Breakfast Ride is the longest standing club ride at ACTC. Our leader today told us that it started out as a way to deliver the newsletter that they send out. They'd make their deliveries and then stop for breakfast. Now newsletters are either mailed or emailed, but on the first Saturday of every month, this ride goes on.
We started out on a paved bicycle/jogging path and then went out into the streets. About halfway we stopped at Lou's in Los Gatos, where of course, I unclipped my left foot and went over to the right. Nearly on top of our triathlete lady. She proclaimed that that was awesome and fabulous, and the other ladies were just thrilled that I, being one of the more advanced in the group, was the one to fall over and make a fool of herself. Of course I was only one of two clipped in.
One of the guys who had been there before asked to split a breakfast with someone, but you guys know how I eat, I wasn't sharing a plate. I ordered the Apricot French Toast and some coffee. Our waitress struggled with putting some napkins under our table to keep it from rocking, while I meanwhile tried to snag one from her to stop the bleeding on my knee. Being satisfied with the table, she grabbed the remaining napkins and walked off.
"Oh, excuse me ma'am, can I have one of those?"
She was gone. Hmmm. I looked at my knee and watched the dark red blood travel a little further down. No napkins...oh well, when she comes back.
Finally she came back with more napkins and I got cleaned up. The food came and it was some pretty hefty helpings.
Then we headed back home, taking a loop around and riding the bike trail back to the park where we started.
There's Ruby in action. It's a little chilly out there, but at least it had warmed up by this point. Not enough to take my jacket off. I'm also proud to say you can see a somewhat impressive quad muscle going on there. I think you can click on the image to enlarge it, in case you can't tell ;-) Go ahead, take a closer look. Haha! Kidding.
I have a 14 mile run tomorrow, so today was a good break day. I probably won't do too many of these at the leisurely pace today's was, as it presents a whole different world of challenges, but there's a slew of different rides, actually every day.
Gotta get that Grizzly patch!!
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