Chase 'Em Down (Loop #5)

Chase 'em down...

Joy here...Sunday morning came, and a few of us (me, Cili Padi, and The Professor) agreed to meet at our usual meeting spot for an 8:30am start time for our usual ride in the park.  The sun was already high in the bright, blue sky, and we were ready to take on the world.

The rolling, winding road.

As we got to the park and began rolling towards Pink Lake and that first hard climb, I was a bit ahead of the other two.  Since the park opened to vehicular traffic for the next two weeks, we have to share the roads with cars, which means that the three of us can't really ride along side-by-side without pissing off motorists (and a pissed off motorist is a dangerous motorist if you're the one on the bike).  So we had to ride in single file, and I was out front, lost in my own thoughts--it was a sunny, daydreamy kind of day--when I could hear someone coming up behind me like a freight train.  I could hear gears turning, and there was a force of air moving in front of the person.  As the locomotive passed me, I was stunned to see that she was a girl!  I'm not used to women cyclists blowing past me with that kind of power...I thought to myself, "holy cow, is that Clara Hughes???"  (For those who don't know, Clara Hughes is an Olympic speed skater and cyclist; she's won something like five Olympic medals--in BOTH the summer and winter Olympics!!!  But most importantly, she's from my same home town.)  In my mind, that woman was Clara Hughes in the flesh...pounding out a powerful rhythm.

Cili Padi cresting the hill...chasin' ME down!

Instead of being daunted by the thighs of the train pulling away from me, I used it as a carrot dangling out there in front of me and picked up the pace, I started the close the gap between mystery woman (Clara) and myself.  As I rode up Pink Lake I had her in my sights.  The downside of her powerful legs is that she's carrying more muscle mass than I am, which means that she has more weight to carry up a steep hill than I do...tipping the advantage in my direction.  So I just stuck to her, and reached her back wheel just at the top of the climb, while I pulled up to catch my breath and wait for my friends.

And that first chase was the start of things to come.  Today I seemed like a bull enraged by a matador.  With each cyclist who passed me, or who I saw up ahead of me on the road, I took the chance to chase him or her down.  When we came upon a group of fit female cyclists, The Professor sighed and said, "oh no, Joy's going to chase them down," which I took to be a kind of permission to do just that:  I rode up behind that group, through them, and eventually in front of them before stopping at the Champlain Lookout to relax with my friends, enjoy the view, and take a bit of a snack before rolling out of the park at breakneck speed.

The view worth chasing for!

The result of all this chasing is that we finished our ride a good 15-30 minutes faster than our usual loop time.  According to my Garmin, our ride time today for 65kms of rolling, chasing hills was 3hours, which unless my math is off (which it might be), has us averaging around 21.6km/hr, when our usual pace through the park lately has been around 20.5km/hr.  So all that chasing really pushed the pace, and gave us a good day out...only now my legs are killing me (I bet Clara's legs don't hurt like this.).

I think I'm going to take a well-earned nap.

Over and out,
Joy