A Sneak Attack!

While we all try to survive "interesting times", ABRTers are cycling indoors on trainers or rollers, or riding solo. To keep members interested ABRT has a Strava "Club" and is tracking team member times on a local Strava segment chosen each week, and how many miles each member recorded on Strava for the week.

It has been difficult for the Wheelsucker, with no wheels to follow while riding. But this week he was on "vacation" -- not by his choice -- though he is very grateful to still be employed, to be teleworking instead of commuting, to have a paycheck, and to have food in the fridge!

The Wheelsucker was able to kayak and cycle more this week as a result of the vacation; both can be done from his home.

With more free time, the Wheelsucker was kayaking and cycling more than usual and the cycling miles added up. He checked the team standings mid week and noticed he was in second place for the mileage total. That inspired him to do a longer-than-recently 66.62 mile (it turns out those tenths of a mile do matter) Saturday ride which put him solidly in second place, not far behind the leader, Antonio Abadia. The Wheelsucker was all set for riding Sunday, but the morning rain faded to drizzle and the roads did not dry out. The Whelsucker went for a long paddle in the kayak, but was itching to ride. He checked the team standings again Sunday afternoon and realized a number of team mates had ridden and added to their miles. The Wheelsucker was down to third in the standings as Deb Dudas had caught and passed him. This COULD NOT stand, so the Wheelsucker pulled out the rollers and mat, pumped air into the track bike tires, filled his water bottle, and got ready.

With key assistance from the 1991 and 1992 Tour de France DVDs the Wheelsucker started pedaling. The rollers do not provide as much resistance as an indoor trainer, and being lazy, the Wheelsucker has configured the track bike with a 53x14 gear, so 190-220 watts gets the Wheelsucker to 25-27 mph, so the miles started adding up. Now riding indoors is INCREDIBLY boring for the Wheelsucker but the TdF DVDs helped, as did averaging close to 25 mph. After 1:30 of pedaling time (with lots of breaks) the Wheelsucker had added 37.88 miles, passed Deb, and was back in second place.

But then things got interesting...

The Wheelsucker realized that with another decent session of "Track Bike On Rollers" he could add enough miles to overtake the leader. Antonio Abadia had led all week and was clearly putting the miles in. But ... by doing one more decent ride on the rollers, late Sunday evening, the Wheelsucker could overtake him so late Sunday night, that Antonio would not realize he had been caught in time to do another ride.

So the Wheelsucke's late evening sneak attack started. Just over 1:15 of riding time later (again with lots of breaks), the Wheelsucker had sneakily ridden past Antonio's total, by a measly 1.5 miles. It was probably close to 11:00pm when he uploaded this last ride, and Antonio was probably fast asleep and had no idea of the Wheelsucker's sneak attack. The Wheelsucker was dehydrated and cooked, but in the lead!

AND IT WORKED!!!

The next morning the Wheelsucker checked Strava and he was number 1 under "Last Week's Leaders". Michael Keir had already ridden 17 miles for the new week.

The Wheelsucker is still too cooked to ride and is content to not ride Monday and let them go. The sneak attack worked once, and that is good enough for him.