Hammer and Nails

This was the name of the group of Portland Velo's race team that almost killed me with the speed they rode today.  It was brutal.  I should've known when Todd said it wouldn't be too bad.  They were doing easily 25mph on the flat sections with jumps.  I was sucking wheel the best I knew how just stay in contact.  I had already put in 2 hours of riding just to get to the start of the ride.  Luckily, I knew something might be up so I took it easy getting out there.

We were cruising at 25ish when the first climb started.  It was a road I've never been up before but I had been down before.  The road is so steep that the time I went down I hit 50 easily.   I had been getting some dirty looks from the peleton because of my time trial bike before the climb.  On the climb I was able to pick my through most of the peleton but couldn't read Todd and one other guy.  I was wishing I had drank more of my water as the 4 full water bottles were killing me.

After the climb we regrouped and I got a compliment from one of the guys saying he's never seen anyone on a time trial bike climb like that.  Ahh...it was good to fit in and no one was giving me any dirty looks the rest of the painful ride.  We stopped to get water and my Polar speedometer stopped so I wasn't able to get an accurate average for that section.

I ended with 100 miles total and I figured about a total ride time of 5:30.  I'm guessing for the Portland Velo section it was easily 22ish or higher average speed.  Those guys were just animals.  There was one big guy who was climbing that big hill in the drops.  He didn't stand once.  Amazing...

1 month 12 days..