Monday Extra: Please hurry up or slow down.

Yesterday morning, I joined the GSV crowd for the 9:30 Sunday ride.  Spence was there so we were guaranteed some hard efforts.

The last few times I've done this ride, it has been relatively mild.  I expected about 40 or 45 miles or so to Ft. Calhoun and back.

Nope.  I guess the wind was more southerly so we went to Glenwood instead.  This makes it about a 60 mile ride.

About 20 or more people were there, but Bernardo, Stu and I were the 3 that managed to hang on to Spence's wheel for the most part.

If we did a paceline, the speed would drop about 3MPH whenever Spence stopped pulling.  We would remain at that lower speed until he pulled again.

For me, it ended up being a hard day on the bike.

As I was making my way home, going west on a flat 27th and Burt, I heard a loud and disgusting belch from behind me.  I turned to see some weirdo on a full suspension NEXT mountain bike, wearing a full face downhill helmet.  The bike looked exactly like this (they sell them at wal-mart):

The helmet looked kind of like this:

I was exhausted and having a nice and easy pedal back home.  My Garmin said I had 64.67 miles in so far.

So the guy pulls up along side me starts talking to me.  I'm sure it was the furthest thing from his mind, but I imagine he's judging himself to be pretty much the shit since he easily closed the gap on some fancy-pants road guy.

"What's up?" he says.

"Not much," I say.

"Sweet.  Where are you headed?"

"Home."

"Sweet.  Where's that?"

"About 3 miles yonder," I point with my finger in the general direction of forward.  It's none of this guy's fucking business where I live.

"Sweet. Where'd you ride today?"

"It was a group ride to Glenwood.  About 60 miles."  Even though I don't care at all what this guy thinks, I find myself wanting to justify his catching up to me.  Yeah - I'll never change.

"Sweet.  Where does the ride start?"

"Blue Line coffee.  9:30.  Sundays,"  What do I know?  Maybe he's an accomplished rider who gets a kick out of looking stupid on wal-mart bikes.

We are now at 33rd and Burt where the road goes up.  He drops into granny gear and says, "Sweet.  Well, maybe I'll see you there sometime."

"Yeah, maybe," I say.  I'm fascinated.  He's spinning at about 120 rpms but his bike is not going any faster.  That was a small gear. He was obviously showing me what he had.  My earlier thought that he was somehow proud of catching me was verified.  He was done talking.  He could no longer ride at my slow pace.  It was time to kick it up a notch and attack this hill.  He knew there was no way I could keep up with him, so he bid me adieu as the road pitched to the heavens.

At first, I wanted to just let him go on up the hill and leave me alone.  Then we'd both be happy.  I waited for a minute, soft pedalling, but he wasn't getting any farther away from me.  So I just decided to ride my own easy pace up the hill.  One second later, when I flew by him, he ... grabbed my wheel.  He was trying to keep up with me.  His breathing became dangerously labored, but he was doing it.  At about halfway up, he was still with me.

My legs were tired.  Real tired.  But soon, my ears got more tired of hearing the struggle going on behind me.  I am embarrassed to say that I went the rest of the way up the hill as hard as I could.

Well, that got rid of that guy - but then I was forced to listen to my own labored breathing for the next 5 minutes or so.  Oh bitter irony.