Biking with the Big Boys

I've been doing rides in the Upper Valley of El Paso for about a year and a half now. There is this super fast group made up of extremely athletic people that just look fast standing still - you know the people I'm talking about. They just LOOK like triathletes. People like Bobby Gonzalez, Gretchen McElroy, Brent Crowley, etc.  I've seen them in the parking lot but never got a good look at them on the bike b/c they'd just zoom by me. Well today my schedule called for me to ride the EP TriClub group ride that leaves at 8. The only guys there were guys that are even newer than me. We took off and were piddling along at 16-17 mph when we came up on this big group and, Gulp!, it was the fast guys. Included in the group were the aforementioned three godawful fast people, one of which is my coach.  Gretchen said "Come on Rob" and so I did. In my mind, I was set up to ride maybe an hour and a half and go about 25 miles or so. I had no idea how far they were going but Gretchen said so off I went.

As a little background as mentioned in my last post, I crashed hard at the Mesilla Valley Triathlon, beat myself up pretty good, and sucked ass on the swim. My worst performance in the pool ever. So needless to say (although I just did anyway), my confidence wasn't that high.

I was tooling along with the group and we were going a pedestrian 20 mph or so and then we turned onto Highway 28 and whoom! Off we went.  Turns out we were riding to La Mesa, home of the famous Chope's, some 21 miles from where we started.  Much to my surprise and amazement, I hung on the fast people all the way out! In the last 3-4 miles, all that was left were me, Bobby, Gretchen and 2-3 others out of 15-20 that started. Way cool. We hit 29 mph and averaged 24 mph for that stretch. I had no idea I could do that. I had never hung with those guys for more than 1-2 miles at most.  They probably viewed it as a normal training but it was monumental to me.

We hung out in La Mesa for maybe 5 minutes and then started heading back. I thought maybe I'll stick with them 5 miles or so and then I'll crack. Nope. Hung out with them to Gadsden and then started to crack - couldn't hang on the wheel and watched them recede into the distance.  Then a truck with its hazards on came around me. It was a support truck for 3-4 kids that had latched onto the fast group on the way back. I found that if I got right behind that truck, I could hold 27-28 mph relatively easily.  Within 3 miles, I caught up to the fast group again! I stuck with them all the way back after that and felt very proud when I pulled back into the starting point with the fast group. I stayed with them all the way!

Big day for yours truly. Just had to write about it.  Next up is the Holloman Duathlon which is a 5K run and 30K bike. No swim! Yay! I have no idea how flat or hilly the course is since the good folks at Holloman are a reclusive bunch that post absolutely nothing about the race and apparently don't care if anybody registers or not judging by the difficulty I had trying to register for said race. I'll let you know how it goes since I need to redeem myself from the Mesilla Valley Triathlon.