A three hour tour

So...we had this big group ride planned for yesterday.  As it turned out, the only ones not suffering from cramps were me, Rich, and Brian.  To all those who chose the warmth of your bed, a quart of Ben and Jerry's, and a fistfull of Midol:  you missed a great ride.

We rode away from Khaladi Brothers Coffee which by the way has the best looking group of Saturday morning barristas I have ever seen.  Such a sexy group hasn't been seen in a long time and I was very reluctant to leave.  But, as they were quite busy, I realized the Cervelo would be the only thing I'd mount that day.  Disappointed but ready to ride, we drove over to Brian's house and set forth.

Down the Platte River Trail we encountered Buzzsaw who was on his way to a meeting.  I think he meant he had to pee.  Who goes to meetings on Saturday?  We made it to Chatfield state park and down toward Rich's new digs.  The pace was SLOOOOOOW.  Brian was holding a heart rate of about 35 and refused to go any harder as he's on some training plan which apparently involves sleeping on the bike.  Rich didn't want to ride any harder and refused to climb Deer Creek Canyon probably because he's terrified of both deer and creeks.  Canyons he's OK with.  I on the other hand was feeling like Floyd Landis with a brand new testosterone patch on each nut.

Avoiding climbs was easy.  All the climbing was short and didn't pose any real difficulty for any of us except for Brian who occasionally nodded off due to his max heart rate limit of 44 BPM.  Pretty much the entire ride was flat but there was wind.  Lots of wind.  So much fun and ease with a tailwind on the first half turned into a slower return trip with the wind in our faces.  I found the best thing to do in that situation was to draft of Brian.  It's like riding behind a billboard.  No wind at all.  But I did find his snoring distracting.    

We got close to Brian's place and were chatting along at cat-4 women's speed when we spoke with an inquiring Mexican fellow who was building some sort of retaining wall in his/his employer's yard.  He asked about the spandex we wear and whether or not it makes us faster.  Now, I usually dislike these kind of taunts and jabs at masculinity just because I'm wearing lycra but I figured the guy was just confused because he didn't see any of us wearing our Mexican wrestler masks.  Brian replied to our confused friend's query that its the shaved legs that make us fast.  That answer seemed to suffice.  He continued to build his wall which looked quite nice.

We rode just short of three hours and during that time prepped ourselves for the oncoming CX promoters meeting.  We talked about the things we'd like to see come out of the meeting and how we think the ACA will eventually have to split into a Boulder group and a "rest of Colorado" group.  Suffice to say, the meeting did NOTHING to disprove that theory.  In fact, the meeting reinforced the idea.  That's all I have to say about that.