Tucson Training Camp - Day 8

Today was our last day for the Tucson Training Camp. We had our sights set on a popular group ride called the Shootout. Oddly, I was a bit nervous and had trouble sleeping for a “group ride”. As any good day, it started with a breakfast at IHOP. IHOP at 4:45 is a strange mix of party goers that rallied to make it to breakfast, a couple older folks reading the newspaper, and then us two cyclists. Just to make sure I was the trashiest most dangerous rider today, I forgot my nice water bottles and opted for 2 dasani water bottles that rattled in my cages. Totally Classy.

I’m going to give some details of this ride for the Daredevil. He would have loved this ride, the tactics, and all the carbon bikes. My understanding of this ride is that a B group goes off at about 6:45am and the A group goes of about 7:00am. For those not into the cycling scene, at a “group ride” the fastest pace is the A group, the second fastest is the B group, sometime there is a C group as well. At 6:45am the cyclists just started rolling; no announcement or anything. I was thinking about riding in the A group but it appeared to me that everyone was starting together. I didn’t see anyone linger around the line waiting for the next start.

We rolled easily through Tucson and the slowly picked up pace as we left town. The ride climbs gently for 20 miles. I was hurting at the 17 mile per hour pace. MD had “nature break” just before the pace started to pick up and unfortunately missed a green light. He found himself riding alone for most of the first half of the ride without any help. It was a all out effort for me to hold the back of the lead pack until a bridge at mile 22. Many, including me, stopped for a nature break and regroup for the next 30 some miles. We had about 20 people for the rest of the ride. There was one more little climb but the rest was a good tempo ride.



Not uncommon for me, I flatted about 8 mile from the finish. MD came rolling by in a group shortly and stopped to assist me. I can change a tire but it always takes me about 4 times longer than most. I got the new tube pinched as I was remounting, and I had over inflated it before putting the tire on…I was a mess.

As I was working on my tire and all of a sudden a group of about 45 cyclists went FLYING by. It turns out, there is an A group and they are real fast. I would have loved to seen more but it was gone in a flash. It was all I could do to hold the tail end of the B group on this ride for the first 25 miles. The A group would have been funny.

Stats
62 mile ride (3:10)