Hello all....! Just wanted to send a little message out to everyone letting them know a little about the ride for thursday th 15th that will be leaving from Big John's Place (sounds like a bar). After speaking with Big John, we thougtht that it would be pretty neat to change the route/ride for a day and see what everyone thinks about it. Now what we are considering doing is a circuit/criterium style ride. What that means is that we will be laying out a route somewhere in the area with a smaller distance and we will do laps around the entire route. Why do we want to do this? Well for one it gives everyone the knowledge of where we are going and where we will be. Since we are doing GROUP rides on tues. and thurs., and the pace seems to always get lifted and we finish with less than we started, this will allow us all to be on the same course and pickup anyone who should fall back or see them again on the next lap, whatever. In all reality it is really setting a substrate for you to focus on certain aspects of your training/group ride. We will include one long hill where you will be able to set yourself a tempo for a good duration (which helps you learn how to train yourself to recover on hills), and there will be some good flat sections for recovery and a great downhill to help on your descents and speed. The route will then hit the uphill climb again. Once we have everyone that will be doing the ride on thursday, we will then determine if everyone would like to regroup at the top of the climb or if everyone would just like to be picked back up on the next time around.
Sometimes circuit style rides are very good for you, in that you can see how you did the time previous and think about how you would like to approach it the second or third or fourth....etc. It should be very fun, as if almost doing a criterium road race where you would do laps around a much smaller course, most likely 1 mile. They usually can be dangerous. When the distance of the route is increased they are usually called circuit races. In any case, we just wanted to throw something new out there and see how it all works.
The route in mind is as follows (and if anyone has any suggestions we may work them in and change as desired): from Big John's; a one mile warm up down Robertson Rd. to the intersection at Lamor Rd.; we crossover Lamor Road and begin the circuit/route down robertson road to valley view road where we will make a right and proceed to state route 258, and make a right up to neshannock road and begin our long gradient hill climb all the way back up to Lamor Road. We will then make a right turn at lamor and neshannock and ride to winner road and make another right and go all the way back down to 258 and proceed to make lap # 2. Now we can go all the way back to robertson but in my opinion Valley View road is poorly paved and a little dangerous, so I would prefer not to return to it. Ideally I would like to ride with everyone for at least two laps around to make sure everyone knows where they are going and what not. I think that the mileage would be about 4 miles or so, so I am thinking that we would do about 7-8 laps. But again everything is all up to those who are interested in participating. I know that some of us have events that are coming up and this could be an opportunity to work on some areas that you may not get to on your own.
So we will leave and warm up together, ride a lap or two together, and pending everyones opinion or desire regroup on the top of the climb (which does have a flat spot and then one last little who-rah at the top, so the top is at the farm about a 1/2 mi. from the blinker on lamor), and then ride to Winner road for the second lap together and then we will get busy.....
Just a little HEADS-UP on "GROUP RIDES"....the intent and purpose of a group ride, outside of something new that we will try on thursday, is to ride TOGETHER. We had 12 people start about two weeks ago on a tuesday and finished with five together. Now we all know that everyone has there own agenda and quite possibly their own training schedule, and that is great. But if you intend upon riding with a group your intentions should not be to come to the ride and blow it up. If you have a certain way that you have to ride on that day, then go do it. If you have a certain distance that you have to ride that day, then go do it. You see the faster people of the group don't go out with the intentions of dropping everyone, and if they did they could. But they don't. If collectively everyone decides that they want to ride 50 miles then that is what they will do. If they only want to do 25 then that is that. We just want to maintain the original idea of getting together to ride with people and finish with those people. Take advantage of those around you and see if there is anyone that wants to go out and hammer, or dissappear into the sunset, its tons of fun. But when the common goal is to ride together, we would like to finish together. I am sure that on a couple separate instances I have dissappeared, but I always try to come back and get those who were left behind.
I hope that the group riding has been beneficial to all. I have seen alot of improvement in everyone that I have ridden with. I am sure that the more consistent all of you are in riding the better that you will all get. Keep up the hard work and if you have not tried any of those long distance rides or events, you really should. They change everything about the way you ride, the time in which you do it and they really make you a better person (how, I am still trying to figure out, but that is what I am always being told?).
Happy Trails (and roads) !!!
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