Phoenix, AZ — Ted and I did Landis Cyclery’s group ride today. Being a Saturday, this is the day they do loops around the Ahwatukee Foothills area (Pecos Rd, etc.). We had a good sized group, I’d say about 45 riders and strolled out to “the course”. I met a rider named Charlie, who was a really nice guy. We talked about cycling (duh!) and how he recently got into it and has been progressing well.

Once we got to the ride area, we did a small push up a gradual incline. I was towards the back so I pushed it to move up to the front. It felt pretty hard, even though it didn’t seem like it should have. Maybe it was the cold temperatures or lack of warmup. We then cruised down to Pecos Rd where we opened it up all the way to the end of the road. It was a good effort for about 3-4 miles. As long as I stayed out of the wind it wasn’t bad, but going into the wind to move up was pretty hard for me. I did manage to get up there for the “sprint” but had no idea where the sprint line was, so I went all out to early and got passed to the real line. Ted was just ahead of me and did better, maybe top 5 in that sprint.

There were three more sprints on the ride, and I won two of them and Ted won one. I wasn’t sure if that was a big deal because the strong team that had been pushing the pace earlier on Pecos, pulled off after the first sprint and did their own ride. Still, Ted and I were happy with our sprints, and we both made a couple friends. Later, upon looking at my PowerTap data, I realized that those sprints were pretty good (at least for me), and I was only 7% off my all-time best 12-second power.