Thursday morning River Road

The past three Thursday the usual Thursday morning group ride has consisted of riding along River Road and then taking 9W back to the GWB. This has turned out to be much preferable to our previous rides to Piermont in the morning. True, we don't get to stop for breakfast halfway through the ride but the scenery is nicer, the hills are more intense and the route is much shorter. I end up getting back home between 8 and 8:30am which gives me plenty of time to shower, eat and take a nap before work.

Last week Dave showed up on his uncle's Pogliaghi track bike. Kurt and I were both on road bikes. As soon as we got to River Road it basically became a solo ride - Dave zoomed ahead as usual while Kurt and I struggled to catch up. Kurt is a pretty cautious descender however, so I dropped him on one of the longer downhills.

Eventually I caught up to Dave. He had stopped to wait for us by the little cabin on the 180 degree bend of Alpine Road. Dave went down to the bottom of Alpine Road while Kurt and I headed to the top. Kurt and I wondered aloud how long it would take before Dave passed us. Kurt and I made it to the Court house at the top of Alpine Road and waited for Dave. Once we were all together again we got on 9W to head home. Dave took a bunch of photos that can be found here.

Yesterday, of course, was another morning group ride. This time Dave didn't show up and Kurt is on vacation in Mexico. However Lee was back and he met up with me in Brooklyn. We both had decided to take our track bikes. We headed up to the GWB while I attempted to get in touch with Drew. Drew wasn't answering his phone so I thought it would just be the two of us until we got two blocks from the bridge and Drew called me. Unfortunately I had never communicated to Drew that we were on track bikes so he showed up on his roadie.

We all made our way to River Road. Without Dave it wasn't a hammerfest so we stayed together for the most part. I would often end up a few hundred meters behind on the descents as I was the only one riding brakeless and the ground was still wet from the thunderstorms the night before.

We got to Alpine Road and decided to head down to the bottom. We took it easy going up but it was still painful. Alpine road is about a mile and a quarter and averages about a 7% grade. I was in my track gearing (48x15, 84") so I spent most of it out of the saddle.

After the ride I had breakfast with Lee and then headed to work. I felt surprisingly good - usually after the Thursday morning ride I'm really tired and a little bit sore. At first I wondered if perhaps riding my track bike had anything to do with it. Does it fit better? Do I recover better mashing up hills instead of spinning? Then it hit - the races on Wednesday night were cancelled!