KW - An east to west

This is what I posted in the Kingston Wheelers forum:

***

Description of the ride in JFW's words.

An east to west

Cobham - dorking, coldharbour, peaslake (coffee) and home up staples?

Will be gentle as we are now (technically) still runners.

No GPS route provided. My lawyer friends recommend that I remind you that this is a route led by JFW. Swear words might be used during the ride. Impressive sprints might be witnessed, unheard of bonks might be experienced. Join us at your own risk.

***

From that description there are two things you can be absolutely certain of. 

The first one is that I had no idea where we were going. That seems to be something JFW took from our trail running days. Running or riding without a defined route is a form of torture. You are always at mercy of others. JFW used that trick to torture me everytime we went trail running and used it again today. 

The second one is that no one joined the ride. It was just JFW and me. 

I am not totally surprised though. I’m guessing everyone knew my lawyer “friends” are not that great lawyers. Take one example, they failed to mention how much JFW can talk.

God, the man can talk!

Look, I know I am a quiet man. By the time we got to Esher, around km5, I already had said everything I had to say for the whole day. And that was a huge mistake, because from that point on JFW monopolized the “conversation” the whole way.

Believe it or not that is a sign of how bad my form is. The way I normally deal with this situation is upping the pace and forcing the person riding next to me to shut up. That was not possible today. To make things worse my natural Spanish politeness forced me to give him answers now and then which only kept the “conversation” going. At a certain point it became torture. 

Completely lost, my brain at the edge of exploding, this was becoming one of my worst days on the bike… Until I recognized a bit of the road. We were going down to Shere.

Aha! After 65km completely lost I finally knew the way home!!

To make things even better my legendary situation awareness detected JFW’s weakness going up Combe Lane. He was going quiet.

That was my opportunity! 

And I took it. You bet I took it.

I was unable to attack him. We were climbing at snail pace trying to hold some MTB riders’ pace. But I was able to do something even better.

I started to talk to him.

Not only that, I started to talk to him about Zwift racing.

Oh man, did I enjoy the situation?

I went on and on about the advantages of riding a Canyon in the Richmond circuit, the best way to use PowerUps in a race, and the best way to train for Zwift races. All made up. I have almost no knowledge about Zwift racing but I knew JFW was clueless and definitively not interested. That was my revenge. In cold blood. Fully conscious of what was happening.

By the time we got to Cobham he gave up and asked for a timeout and a stop at the gas station.

Look, my lawyer “friends” are average at best. They got it wrong, there were no sprints today, they got right swear words were used during the ride, mostly at the time of reaching the top of a climb, but they nailed the “unheard of bonks might be experienced” prediction.

One of us bonked big time. Just outside of Cobham. Barely 6 km from home.

I didn’t sprint at Esher’s town sign.

That’s what a nice, compassionate, riding mate I am.

The ride in Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/17719063705 

Take care of yourself

Javier Arias González