The Return of TNPT

Ah, another Tuesday. My first Pain Train in nearly 6 weeks. The big question was would I survive or be spat from the rear before the first stop light?

During the first mile or two, I felt the ache from Saturday's century in Huntsville, but my legs loosened up and despite my best efforts to drop into the middle of the pack, I found myself up front...(there are certain points in this ride where the corners are tricky, and it's best to be up front just for my own comfort and to feel safe)...when I didn't want to be up front.

Never fear though, I know that when the hammer really drops, I'll be suffering somewhere near the back, if not off the back.

We cruised up past the ball fields on Ruffner road and as the pace kept creeping up, I found it just a touch surprising that I wasn't having any difficulty keeping up. I know I've put in a lot of miles recently, but they've been slow, and speed training is something I've lacked considerably of late. I rotated off the front, and though there were about 30 riders, a split of 8 riders had developed, which meant that I was on the front more frequently than normal. I found myself second from last at the foot of the final steep roller on Ruffner, and felt good enough to sprint up to take the top of the hill ahead of the rest. I settled back down and fell in with the group where we worked to the end of Ruffner.

At this point, things settled down for 1/4 mile to allow the dropped riders to rejoin and then we were off to the races again up John Rogers Drive (aka "Dog Track"). Again feeling pretty good, I made one critical mistake and allowed myself to rotate all the way to the back just before the hill began. The reason this is not a good thing is that invariably, somewhere up ahead, a split will occur and if you want to make it over the top with the leaders, you have to work extra hard to bridge to them. Yes, that's what happened. It was the only part of the ride where I thought I might be finished, but I managed to pick my way up through the shelled riders to just regain the leaders as they crested the hill.

From there, the route works over to Old Leeds after what can be an easy climb up 78, but isn't easy because everyone (apparently I'm the lone exception) wants to ride an 18 mph pace up the hill. I managed to hang on. I say "managed", though I never thought I'd get dropped. It just hurt. A lot.

From 78 we cross over I-459 and turn onto Old Leeds Road for the run back through Irondale and Mountain Brook to Homewood. Naturally, the pace is high on this section as well, as various riders (it seems they're always the same ones) feel that they need to attack on one of the busier roads we ride. Anyway, we managed to get through OLR without incident, though I thought a time or two that I might be going down, particularly when one rider decided to sprint from behind me and nearly knocked my handlebars sideways with his leg.

All in all, I was very happy with last night's ride. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could still keep up with the boys and even take my turns working. I clearly didn't expect to be where I was.

Unfortunately, this may be the last TNPT for me...scheduling conflicts abound over the next couple of weeks, and it's getting to be too dark too early for the ride to continue past the middle of October.

I'll have to spend the winter making sure I don't lose too much. I'll be doing a lot of riding with family now that fall is here and the weather is so nice.

I'm looking forward to that.