I braved the howling winds to chase the hammerheads once again. I did not feel that strong at the beginning. The peloton really took off fast tonight, doing 22 mph straight against the wind, and kicking it up to 24 mph once it became a cross wind. I was dropped on the first Lake Ridge hill, and there were six others dropped before Texas Plume Road. This paceline was flying!

The 250 feet of climbing (mixed in with 50 feet of descent) on Texas Plume put me further behind, of course, but I seemed to get moving after I got over the top. I reeled in and passed all of the six bikes which got dropped after me, but didn’t catch anyone else. Two of the bikes passed me back. One, a tandem, passed me several times before it was over. Tandems tend to have a speed profile similar to bents, and while the young, fit couple on this one wasn’t quite as fast on downhills as me, they could certainly pedal uphill faster than I can.

I passed a couple of riders on the downhills right after Texas Plume, but they gradually gained on me on the Midlothian Road uphill stretch, then caught the wheel of a faster rider who came from somewhere, and caught me just as I made the turn onto Mount Lebanon Road from the Hwy 67 service road. It was at this same point that I caught the tandem and two other bikes, so there were 7 of us riding together for a short stretch.

It didn’t last long; I took off on the first good downhill, then the tandem and another bike passed me on the next uphill, and I followed them down the Texas Plume Road hill. Once back on Lake Ridge, I passed the tandem and the other bike again, and kept putting distance between me and the other bike, the remainder of the ride. But, though I put some distance between me and the tandem on the downhills, once we got on the flatter part of Lake Ridge, it made up the distance and got on my wheel shortly after the first lake bridge. It went by me on the small incline just past England Parkway, and I was glad Greg wasn’t around to see me huffing and puffing, heart rate in the 180’s, trying to stay on the wheel of a tandem. I really struggled to stay close on the last little incline before the second bridge, but on the short downhill just before the bridge I passed the tandem, only to have it pass me right back, and once again, I struggled to stay close.

As tired as I was, I’m not sure where it came from, but near the end of the bridge (which is just a few hundred feet before the turnoff into Lynn Creek Marina – the end of the ride), I found myself doing a 32 mph sprint, and as I zoomed by the tandem, I could tell they had no answer. Racing at the end of this ride always seems to give me my best times, but I still didn’t quite reach my 20 mph goal, ending up with a 1 hour 35 minute ride, for a 19.8 mph average. The gps showed 31.3 total miles, with 955 feet of climbing, and my average heart rate was 166.

I am really toast right now, and probably won’t be recovered for the 209k ride Saturday, but that’s just a minor detail, huh. I’m sure Nelson will pull me up those hills.