120+ miles on Saturday?

Great ride on Saturday to Sugarloaf with a great group. I think most of us wanted to get a really big ride in before we got hit by the storm of the century. At least all the dopey weather folks were making it out to be a HUGE storm.

In attendance were DC Velo (Mark Sommers, Ken Young, Agent Mulder "AKA Agent Hulk", Shannon "I don't give a crap that all my Landon friends are going to Ivy League schools, I'm going where I want to." NCVC (Jason Meidhoff and Alex Butterfield). Brian Butts (harley). Larsten (unattached). I hope I didn't forget anyone. There were a bunch of really strong riders, but we stayed at a pretty slow tempo (L2) on our way out to Sugarloaf. But the tempo picked up a couple times as the young kids were trying to test us older guys. I rode up Sugarloaf with Ken at a pretty decent tempo as everyone else was content to take their time and spin. My legs were burning by the time we got to the first set of parking lots but we kept going until we got to the Port-a-johns at the top. If Ken had changed his pace, I'm not sure I could've stayed with him. Just a slight increase would have really put me over the edge. And, I'm not sure if I could've tried passing him.

The ride back was spirited with sections of fast riding. A couple times, the kids went hard and tried to escape, but we were diligent and never let them get to far away. I also learned never to slow up when you attack, because you'll need to have some speed going when you get caught. I almost got dropped at one point after jumping pretty hard and then slowing up. When the train went past at 30+mph and I'm doing in the low 20's, they were gone before I knew and had to work super hard to get back on the end. Fortunately, Shannon and Jason slowed up enough for me to catch their wheel and the three of us were able to catch back up.

Toward the end of the ride, Ken and I dropped the group (more like they just let us go) along Tuckerman and we went pretty hard until we got to Old G'town. It really felt good to let the legs open up.

Well as the title says "120+ miles on Saturday?" comes from hearing Agent Hulk claim he was going to ride 120 miles today before leaving for vacation. He wanted to get a really tough ride in so he could recover during his vacation. On the way back from Sugarloaf, he was complaining about how tired his legs were, and I said "you know, if you want to ride 120 miles today, you'll need to do another loop to Sugarloaf".