Feels good to get dropped

Unfortunately with my work schedule and family life it is hard for my to make almost any club ride during the week. They all occur near the city at an hour that I could theoretically get to but have family obligations that need to be met first and foremost. But lately after doing some searching around, a teammate referred me to the Haymarket ride on wednesday nights.

Now I am generally pretty picky about where I do my riding, I hate stopping every 5 - 10 minutes because of lights, and I hate running lights because of obvious reasons of getting hit or looking like another jackass to motorists who assume all cyclists think they can make up their own rules. Secondly I love riding out west, the terrain, the relative quietness and few road signs make it great for me. And lastly if I am going to do a group ride I want to be hurt instead of laying the hurt on other people. So I was searching for somewhere that had a good consistency of strong riders able to lay out some abuse.

My search was ended when I did my first Haymarket ride. It was about a month ago and I enjoyed just about every minute of it until the end when an unfortunate incident between myself an another rider sent me to the ground. I did not let that deter me from coming about again, if anything my race and training schedule have hampered that more than my recovery from my clumsiness on the bike.

Again last night I was able to make the trip, once on 66 it is a quick 20 minute trip from my place in Fair Lakes, which is quicker than a trip to Reston. The weather was great, the A group left a little later than usual and with a small group, 5 which became 6 later on. The pace starts out nicely with a warm up on to Hopewell Road then picks up from there for the first climb and descent into The Plains where we regrouped.

Now I am not the fastest guy, I feel that I can hold my own on most days, although lately I have been in a bit of a funk because a lot of factors outside of riding that have had an impact on my life. But for these guys to go out there and set a really nice hard pace and then drop me and I have to chase to catch on, I loved it. Digging deep almost in a TT mode trying to catch up feels great, the burning in my legs, the hills, the attacks all of it. I think I will be trying to make it out there more often the rest of the season.