Last 60 mile SART for awhile

Today concluded the 60 mile Santa Ana River Trail distance for awhile. At least until after Tucson in November. From here on out the trips will be 80 miles.

Today I completed it in 2:49, averaging 20.1 mph over the entire ride. The entire ride really is about 57 miles and change for what I record.

Mike met up with a guy he met on bikeforums.com. He was a bigger fellow, similar to Mike but seemed cool and was willing to do some pace line work if he was able. I personally prefer to be out front as much as possible but will take a seat behind someone for a bit to relax.

Around 15 miles in, a group of guys pulled up along side me and passed to pull in the front. These guys were an accident waiting to happen. I was riding comfortably at 21-22 mph and they go by me and slow us down to 20. I wasn't happy about that but sat behind them for awhile since the path was so cluttered with oblivious walkers, joggers, recreational bicyclists and of course, the ever hazardous purple menace (Leukemia Lymphoma Society people). We get about 22-25 miles in and two of their riders almost take a spill. One rides off the path into the dirt on the right side around a bend and the other rides into the dirt off the left side, stands up to pull himself back up to the guy in front of him and loses traction on the bike and narrowly saved himself from going down right in front of me. I looked back at Mike and said "I want ahead of these guys." Mike agreed and I clicked up a few gears and prepared to sprint and went. The group moved to the left and boxed me off since there was a walker on the right. That's fine, I shifted down and waited and went again passing them at 27.8 mph. I could have gone harder but saw no point since I wanted to maintain a distance ahead of them and didn't want to kill my legs.

Mike followed me and apparently was able to stay ahead of them for about 2 miles and they reeled him back in. Only later they to claimed that he sprinted and slowed way down when they actually picked up the pace to catch him. However, I cruised at around 24-25 mph for about 7-8 miles and got the gap I wanted. At that point I was TTing my way down to the beach. I didn't want to be mixed back in with them under any circumstances so I had to put out max effort. Mike said they tried for a few minutes to catch me and then gave up because they had some weaker riders and none of them had the strength to pull me back in. Mission accomplished. =) They got down to the beach about 10 minutes after I did. 40ish miles down....20ish to go.

The ride back was nice. Mike and I left before the rolling accident waiting to happen was ready and stayed ahead of them all the way back to the car. We ended up ahead by about 10 minutes again. I thought I had blown myself up on the way down and would be hurting on the way back but it ended up quite the opposite. I maintained a 20.2 average back with a hard 3/4 mile finish pushing 26.5 mph.

Good ride!