Mike and I rode the river trail Saturday. Alex was a no show again. Although to be fair he bailed Friday morning when I invited him. Don't know what the deal is but it's getting annoying inviting him and constantly being told no, or him not showing and not bothering to call. It's hard to deal with because on one hand I don't want to invite him anymore because it gets old...especially the no show and no call bit. On the other hand he's going through some weird times in his life so as a friend I do feel obligated in a way to be patient and keep the invitations open and not start being exclusive. He swears he's going to Tucson with us in 6 weeks for El Tour but he hasn't been on his bike in weeks. How is he going race 80+ miles when he's not riding???
Whatever...
Mike got up and was in a pissy mood which made me not want to deal with him much. I'm sure he feels the same way when I'm pissy. In either case, my mood was brought down on the way down to the trail so when I got on my bike I just left him behind. It's wonderful how no matter my mood when I get on the bike, when I'm done I feel great! The Santa Ana winds were around this weekend so it meant at least half of the ride was going to be in some stiff winds and stiffer wind gusts. I have Bontrager Race XLite wheels on the road bike right now so the aero dish on them is very small. I'll be darned if my front wheel wasn't getting yanked by the wind. It was blowing at an angle from the front/side. I had a flat about 15 miles in going down a short hill so I ended up pulling off to make the 5 minute repair and got back to riding. It was pretty darn chilly so the muscles needed time to wake back up.
On the way down to the beach I really put in a decent effort. The general rule of thumb is you ride harder than normal against the wind because when you have it to your back, riding is cake. 38 miles and I hit the beach. Had a few wheel suckers jump on behind me for a bit after I passed them and they didn't stay there for more than a mile...if that. They probably didn't want to work that much. I thought I'd have the wind to my back for the 20 mile return trip to the car. NOPE! It was all headwind and the first 10 miles of it was worse than what I had going down...or maybe I was tired enough from my effort going down that it seemed that way. Who knows. It was really depleting and draining. I turned in a 58 mile time averaging somewhere in the 18.something mph range. Far from my typical average speed.
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