Group Ride!

My notes say that the last one was on June 20, which is far too long. There may be people who thrive, always riding by themselves. It is certainly good to have nothing but your own snout in the wind on a regular basis. But there is definitely a place for riding with others. Not surprisingly, I've had motivation problems the past six weeks (also because a planned riding adventure fell through). Same old flat loops near the home town week after week. Not that they're not pretty or that you can't do stuff on them, but one needs some stimulation, goals, and certainly camraderie beyond the love for the sport to keep things interesting and stay sharp. I do, at least. So last night I went looking for my sort-of Eendracht teammates (they've been nothing but nice since I joined two years ago, but I've had a hard time joining them on a regular basis) who do a pretty good ride every Thursday night at seven. There were only five of us (we found an additional rider half-way through our ride) and I ended up with 52 miles for the night, about 40 of which were with the group. In Holland, you have to negotiate traffic, traffic furniture, narrow bike paths and the like on every ride, but we found some stretches where we could ride a pace much better than any of us would have done on his own, and our average together was somewhere between 21 and 22 m/h. We even included two of what in this part of the world pass for little hills (Soester Engh; Soestduinen). Everyone was able to help at the front, and toward the end we were still motoring through a couple of towns at 24-25 m/h. Nothing dangerous, but you certainly had to pay attention, also because at this hour (going on 9 pm) the sun was hanging pretty low and there were times you could not see a whole lot up ahead (signs already of summer winding down). I got home at 9, a little late for the body to calm down in time for a normal night's sleep. The ride was well worth a slightly restless night, though.