Sunrisers

With the Cyclist on Fire out of town I opted to ride with the Sunrisers Saturday morning. Regular readers of this blog are well-acquainted with my former arch-nemesis, Boss Hogg. The Sunrisers are Boss Hogg's cycling group. So all the local cycling groups, like classic Mastodon albums have a concept. The idea behind the Sunrisers is they start as early as safely possible (aka sunrise-7:30 AM currently), they ride a 39 mile loop with no stops or breaks so the ride is over by 9:30.  That appeals to me. I'm not one of those people whose social calendar revolves around riding on the back county roads babbling about tires and gloves with some dopes for 5 hours.

The beginning of the ride was unremarkable. They were riding at the same pace as the Gliders. Publix was there and he was  huffing and puffing- not faring well for some reason. About 40 minutes into the ride one guy takes off sprinting  and the group splinters. I speed up some but don't really give chase. Anyway a few minutes later up at the next intersection of county roads everyone is stopped and 4 dudes have their pants pulled down taking leaks. Seriously?  Did they not pee before they left home? So much for the "no breaks" Sunrisers because now we are just standing there. They should change their name to the Urinators and get sponsored by Flomax.

This is where it gets weirder. So we start up again. I start pedaling and there is another dude by me. The rest of the group never catches up. I don't know what is going on. I'm riding fairly slowly, the other dude starts to speed up. I let him go and finally I give up trying to figure out what is happening with the other rider and just go up to my normal speed.

It is foggy and damp. Road spray is kicking up onto my Molteni wool jersey which doesn't thrill me. I try to catch the other dude in front of me but I can't make up any ground on him. So I wound up riding solo for over half the ride. Amusingly, 3 riders from the group catch me at the very end with like 2 minutes to go. These guys appear to be better riders than me. They are younger and fitter than the Gliders. I assume that someone had a mechanical problem that they all stopped to help or perhaps they needed to stop and pee several more times.

Back at the Chevron station I overhear that someone  lost something and they had been looking for it. For what it's worth I set a new personal 2 hour watts record.