First Outdoor Ride of the Year!

Saturday morning's ride is in the books, folks! It was the much anticipated First Outdoor Ride of the Year. I imagine more seasoned cyclists look forward to this joyous day every year, but alas, it is my first winter owning a road-bike so it's all new to me. Or wait, am I wrong b/c more seasoned cyclists don't anticipate this day because they are out year-round? Whatever. 

So with that, we're fast approaching my one-year cycling anniversary. Pretty exciting, huh? It was at the end of March last year that I purchased my very first road-bike (Fuji Roubaix Pro, 2008). It's been quite a ride so far (how painful was that pun?) and I'm looking forward to a great time on the bike this season.

Let's recap the ride, shall we?

Here was the prescribed route.

 

Map.

The loop started us at the fountain in Dupont Circle. The three of us went north until we hooked up with Beach Drive (shut down to cars on weekend daylight hours). From there we hung a left on East-West Hwy. until eventually catching MacArthur Blvd and riding that back into town. All told, we covered about 30 miles (including commuting distances to dupont) - not a bad distance to get us started.

I'm VERY new to group riding, by the way. I trained on my own for the most part last summer. As slowtwitch is my witness, I never drafted off of other riders doing the same training routes. A few times, however, I would see especially, ahem... fit women and try to jam down the pedals in order to keep up with them. They would, of course, drop me and that would be that.

So with my rookie group-riding status on the table, I chose to lay-off with any leading responsibilities and just let the other guys set the pace. The pace was definitely comfortable, but more on the slow side of comfortable as opposed to the healthy-sweat side. The perks were definitely the level of respect you got from cars merely because you were traveling in a group instead of on your own. Very cool!

I started to get a little antsy toward the end of the ride so I'd always "break out" and "attack" all of the hills, but then shut it down and wait for the others to catch up. 

You like my pseudo-cycling lingo?

I also don't own any cold-weather cycling gear, but was able to just mix and match various other athletic gear to protect all parts of my body save for my toes and fingers - which froze.

Good weather. Good people. Good ride.

annnnnnnd before I forget... light swim on Friday: only 2,000m which included various drill-work and nothing for time or speed.