I rode out to meet Tien, Lorelei, and her best friend for our Saturday morning run yesterday. I rode the TT bike out there since it was a brick day but unfortunately my bag with running shoes and clothes was left behind. Oh well. Tien wasn't able to make it either so Lorelei and her friend went for a short walk while I loaded the bike onto the back of the car. On the way out there I had some joker pull directly to in front of me to the side of the road as I was headed down a hill at 35 mph. I went around him and met up with the fat old fart later at a light and asked him why he didn't pull over behind me when he heard the sirens. He simply argued that sirens mean pull over and so he did...right in front of me! I told him I was headed down the hill at 35 mph and it wasn't cool of him. He simply copped an attitude and told me if I couldn't handle my bike then I should park it.
Those of you that know the braking time and characteristics of a TT/Tri bike know where I'm going. Those that ride on the road regardless if it's on a road bike or TT/Tri bike know the stopping capabilities of our bikes in scenarios like that.
Today I took the road bike out for my usual longer distance ride. I was late meeting Alex by an hour. I thought somehow that we were meeting at 8 even though Friday I told him we would meet at 7. A very rare brain fart on my part with regard to meeting time. I started the ride solo and quickly met up with one of the riders from SC Velo. Demy was his name. He was pretty cool and shortly after meeting he split off to meet some other riders at a local bagel shop for an organized ride.
As I headed up the street further on the quicklink I have installed to facilitate easy removal of my chain for cleaning popped off and went flying somewhere. I parked the bike and chain and wandered about scanning over the intersection for the missing half of the quicklink. As luck would have it Demy arrived trying to catch up to me after nobody was to be found for his ride. He helped me look and found the link. I had a binding chain link further up the road that was wreaking havoc on my gearing as I pedaled and we both looked over the chain, identified the problem and came up with a field solution. Really nice guy.
Demy and I split again as he headed up GMR and I headed further out on Sierra Madre out to the SGRT. I met up with Alex about 35 miles later and he joined me. I finished the ride completing 67 miles. I race next weekend but will be at 70 miles the following weekend. I really need to push on and get up to 80+ miles by then end of September.
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