Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Waller Mill Meltdown

55 miles of rolling hills in Williamsburg. Most of the JRVS/Casey Auto team lives on the peninsula and regularly do this ride from the Waller Mill parking lot. Looking for a change of pace, Greg and I head up Sunday morning. Rick, Steve, Dave and maybe 10 others show before 9 am. "Super-Rick" tries to find a phone booth to change into his "Super-Kit", but settles for the bathrooms. After emerging in his white gloves, we rolled out. Picking up another 6 or so people in the first few miles, we made a good sized pack of about 20.
We on the southside, although cursed with flat land, are definitely blessed with well paved roads. W'burg has hills, but the road surfaces leave much to be desired. I see now how spoiled I am with the riding in southern Chesapeake and Va. Bch. We have good roads here for the most part.
Being my first ride in W'burg on a roadbike, I was a little concerned how I would handle the hilly terrain. Turns out its not that much harder than flatland. In the flats you pedal constantly, because there are no hills to coast down, no recovery. The hills are harder to climb, but you can coast down the other side and recover!
I hung with the pack for the first 30 miles, rotating up and taking a pull, I felt good. Did I mention the wind was blowing 30 mph.? The pack hit a stretch of open fields and a crosswind started to split us up. I let a gap open and I was done. Greg waited for me and we pulled out the map. Did I mention we didn't know where we were? We traded pulls back in, consulting the map a few times.
It was different and alot of fun. Next time staying with the pack will be a priority. Not wanting to blow myself up actually made it worse by working harder out by myself. Lesson learned. When we going back?

1 comment:

sam-eye-am said...

Dude, that sounds like the century we did!