One thing that I’ve discovered, through my years and years of accumulated training wisdom, is that there’s absolutely and unequivocally no such thing as an easy group bike ride.

Let’s back up. Yes, it’s June now, and I probably should be rollerskiing. But: NEWS FLASH!! I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE! This means no more enforced boredom or misery in the form of OD classic skis with Walt, rollerboarding to exhaustion, or time spent with the baseball players in the weight room. Not that I would have been doing too much of that anyways in the last few weeks, what with the end of the semester, senior week (read: college-sanctioned and enforced drinking), and a slow-to-heal knee injury. But what this means is that my training for April and May  largely consisted of short, easy bike rides.

Over the last couple of weeks, however, my knee has finally been feeling good enough to start riding hard again. Two Sundays ago I got to jump in a fun little training criterium, and then this last Saturday I did the storied “Saturday Morning Ride” in Portland. If you’ve never heard of the SMR before, it’s the real deal–anywhere from 40 to 70 guys (and the occasional intrepid girl) hammering around Portland at about 25 mph, using up the entire lane, sprinting at regular intervals, and generally making mayhem. It’s totally awesome, and I recommend it to anyone who has the constitution for that kind of thing (which is probably anyone who’s reading this blog to begin with…).

In any case, with the Auburn races this coming weekend (more on those later), I’ve been ramping up my training from 3 hours a week to more like 6 or 8 hours a week. This means I’m serious, legit, and that the Freeman brothers should probably watch their collective back (on a who-does-the-most-badass-training basis, rather than actually having to be worried about losing to me in a ski race), because my hours are going up, and my splits on the track have been going down.

Thus, yesterday, after the SMR and another good ride on Sunday, I opted to go on the thrice-weekly pedal with “the old men of Augusta.” Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, these 10 crusty older (over-50) dudes meet up in the parking lot of the Augusta Career Center and ride their $5,000, Zipp-404-equipped bikes on a 30-mile out-and-back loop on Route 27. In and of itself, riding on Rt. 27 makes little to no sense, given that it’s dominated by semi trucks on their way to Farmington and tourists on their way to Belgrade Lakes. But then again, most of the things athletes do make little to no sense, so I just enjoy it for what it is–usually a low-key, moderate-paced excursion with a bunch of friends.

However, at this point, I’m pretty sure that the Old Men of Augusta Ride (henceforth OMAR) only exists as a “low-key, moderate-paced excursion” in my mind, along with unicorns, jackalopes, and me winning the Tour de France (both the overall and the final stage on the Champs-Elysees [has that been done before? b/c if so, that would be awesome]). Though yesterday before heading out I recalled that the OMAR was usually nice and slow and relaxed, upon further reflection I’m pretty sure that of the 20 or so times I’ve done this ride, that has only actually been truly easy like once or twice, if that. In fact, I’ve had similar experiences numerous times on the Brunswick Tuesday Night Ride (BTNR). The BTNR is–in my mind–a marked contrast of the Portland Tuesday Night Ride (PTNR), a preposterous 50-mile epic undertaking that seemingly tries to conquer every single vertical foot within a 20-mile radius of Portland. The Brunswick ride is–again, only in my mind–much easier: only 30 or 40 miles, with a lot less people and much more limited firepower.

In most of my BTNR experiences, as well as with last night’s OMAR, this is what happens. First, I arrive at the designated meeting place thinking mostly about how much better a rider I am than all of the other silly fools assembled around me: I’m a Cat. 3, these guys are all old and tired and don’t deserve their $5,000 bikes, my legs are totally jacked, etc. Then I sit quietly in the cool cyclist-pose on my bike (one foot on the ground, the other foot clipped in and resting my thigh on that side on the top tube) as all the old dudes or Brunswick regulars make small talk, and, depending on my mood,  I either plot out how I will utterly humiliate and embarrass these individuals, or relax into a Zen-like state in preparation for the calming, soothing experience of a pleasant, easy ride that will not at all tax my well-developed calves.

What inevitably happens is this: one of the old guys on his $5,000 bike actually turns out to somehow be ridiculously strong. Yesterday, this old guy was the dude rocking the sweet Garmin-Chipotle bike with carbon wheels, and whose nickname, I discovered at the end of the ride, is “F—— Jeff,” with the “F——” pertaining to the intensity at which he pedals. In addition, also present yesterday was another old guy with a foot-long beard, a fanny pack, and a mirror on his handlebars, as well as a pudgy-looking triathlete–complete with aero bars–on his first-ever group ride. For the first half of the ride, I spent about 75% of the time suffering on F—— Jeff’s wheel, periodically checking behind me to confirm that yes, in fact, beard-dude and triathlon guy are still there.

This lunacy continued on the way back. We did ultimately manage to drop beard-dude and triathlon guy, but I had to dig disturbingly deep to make it up the one big hill and not get dropped by F—— Jeff.

Humbled and only slightly disappointed, I returned home last night and drowned my sorrows in a delicious dinner of baked penne with 5 cheeses, prepared by my sister. The only thing that makes me feel marginally better is that on Saturday I get to race in the Pro-1-2-3 race with Mark McCormack and Ted King. I’m pretty sure that cycling is the only sport in the world that can offer this degree of ego inflation and reduction: you can ride shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s best one day, then struggle to to keep up with bearded-dude the next.

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