Wargrave. Not a Z2 ride

Dai showed up in excellent humour today and as he wanted a Zone 2 ride he, for once, allowed everyone, including me, to take turns at the front.

That is a good base for a great ride. That, and the nice weather. So nice that two out of the eight in the group were riding without gloves. I wasn’t one of them.

At the coffee stop we had the opportunity to comment on the most recent Zwift racing results. We marvelled at Denis’ results at Zwift racing and despite the effect those races have in the quantity and quality of his work at the front, we all agreed that’s the right thing for him to focus on. Dai in particular also seemed very interested in taking on Zwift racing.

The other part of the conversation at the coffee stop was about what a training ride is. Not that we came to any conclusion beyond Back For Breakfast rides are NOT a training ride. Something about missing “through and off” riding. Don’t ask me.

To show THEM how it is done we rode through and off at Drift Road. The result was not very impressive if you ask me. A solitary rider was able to keep up with the pace of our eight riders group despite him leaving a good gap to not be in our wheels. The Pope attacked at a very random point (to be fair I don’t think anyone was surprised about that one). Marek and DD formed a mini train and caught almost everyone despite the gap the rest of the group had on them at the “climb”. Marek still claims that was not one of the “few mini efforts” (https://www.strava.com/activities/8465391020) that took him out of riding at Zone 2 all day. Apparently the sprint was taken by Calum, the same Calum that was telling me minutes before he was considering focusing his training in Time Trialing.

Decided to get things back to normality I prepared myself for the last sprint. A sure win for me, despite all the work I have done at the front, was lost because Ed van del Poel decided to have a puncture a few meters before the sprint. 

As punishment we took back the old tradition of timing puncture repair time. Ed van del Poel is now leading the board with a performance he described as “Work to be done!” (https://www.strava.com/activities/8465498623). Always understanding Dai was more magnanimous and rated it as “Top quality puncture repair 🏆” but I’m asking myself if he is being ironic, something I never seen Dai doing..

That’s it. Apologies for the few Saturday Gang inside jokes in today’s report. Although, paraphrasing the GREAT Tim Krabbé at The Rider, “Non-Saturday Gangers. The emptiness of your lives shocks me”.

 The ride in Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8465165355 

Take care

Javier Arias González