The Tuesday Glenelg High School "Training" RideThe Wheelsucker Report

The wheelsucker keeps hoping to get better, and works with a coach in an effort to get the most benefit from his training time. Coach Mike Birner lives just south of route 70, near Glenelg High School, which is where a Tuesday afternoon/evening training ride starts and ends. Though it takes the wheelsucker awhile to drive out there from Annapolis, he gets to ride with his coach (and hopes the coach is watching from time to time and can make some constructive suggestions), and the route is 'hillier' than the Davidsonville rides, and has different strong riders, so is more challenging for the wheelsucker than the Davidsonville rides. Apart from Mike Birner, Ramon Benitez shows up, as well as several other strong riders whose names the wheelsucker cannot remember.

This past Tuesday afternoon traffic on route 32 was terrible, so the wheelsucker rolled into the back parking lot of Glenelg HS after 5:55, and the ride leaves at 6:00… Despite frantically changing and pumping up tires in what had to be a new personal best time, the wheelsucker missed the rollout, and chased frantically to get back on before the pace started to pick up. He barely made it, huffing and puffing.

A group of over 40 rolls out, but the rolling terrain and aggressive climbing by the stronger riders reduces the group all the way through the approximately 1:35 of riding. There are some places on the route where -- for reasons unkown to the wheelsucker but still very appreciated -- the pace slows for awhile, letting a few recently dropped riders back on. The wheelsucker is curious to know how and when the group shrinks, but the wheelsucker is usually fixating on the wheels in front of him and going around riders that are gapped by more than a few inches (so he doesn’t have to close gaps measured in bike lengths rather than inches), so is not actually looking back to see who is going OTB on a climb.

But the wheelsucker does recall struggling near the top of two of the longer climbs and glancing behind to see if there was another wheel to follow if he lost the one he was on at the moment, and seeing NO ONE behind him on one of the climbs, and just Chris Harshman behind him on the other. So the lead group was down to twelve riders or less by this time.

The last time the wheelsucker did this ride a few weeks ago he knew very few of the riders and being unsure who was strong enough to not be gapped (and therefore a good rider to follow), the wheelsucker found himself riding near the front, but trying to avoid taking pulls, always difficult to pull off elegantly.

This time the wheelsucker knew the route better and decided to follow either Chris or Mike when he could. This worked well, though Chris liked to work the front and took several hard pulls early, while Mike was behind the wheelsucker for the first half of the ride and only started to 'show' near the front on some of the climbs when gaps started to open. The wheelsucker did end up rotating to the front a couple of times in the first half, but took a token pull and pulled off, saving his energy for the climbs.

At one point fairly early Ramon and two other riders went off the front on a climb and opened a gap. The wheelsucker went around the riders being gapped and ended up on the wheel of the fourth place rider only to realize that that rider wasn't going to close the gap. Thinking this might be the break of the day, the wheelsucker went to maximum wheelsucker climbing power and pulled around, expending enormous (for the wheelsucker) energy, but could not make it all the way across and then realized the lead group was going to stop at a stop sign anyway, so he sat up. Everyone else had known about the stop sign and avoided wasting the energy!

After making it over the two hardest climbs on the back of the lead group, the wheelsucker started to feel good. He was still finding ways to avoid taking long hard pulls at the front, was feeling a little more rested and the lead group was down to about 11 riders. After a nice fast flat curving section the ride was almost over. Mike had dropped off to ride home, and Chris had sat up. There was not much further to go. One rider was off the front and the wheelsucker started to follow Ramon's wheel, expecting Ramon to jump and go after him. This worked for awhile (though Ramon never actually seriously chased), but following Ramon's wheel closely requires more watts and more surging that the wheelsucker can sustain and the wheelsucker found himself drifting back in the group on a climb and then to his horror a gap opened two riders in front of him. They did not close it. The wheelsucker tried to, but was mostly blown and the gap opened. He quickly dropped the two other gapped riders and chased hard (for an aging wheelsucker), particularly when he saw another lone rider gapped ahead of him, but despite the wheelsucker's best efforts he was slowly losing ground to a group of four riders chasing the lone leader, while only slowly gaining on the single rider in between him and the chase of four. The gap was not large and everyone was in sight when the last climb/sprint came and everyone sat up and soft pedaled back to the high school. So the wheelsucker hung in for about 7th place, except this is a training ride, not a race, remember? ;-)