Monday Post Party Ride: The Wheelsucker Report

Being new to the sport, the wheelsucker does not fully understand how to train, the seasons, when the off season starts, and what one does during the off season. Hiring a coach has helped, as the wheelsucker simply checks a website to check what today's (or tomorrow's) workout is, and does it.

But the wheelsucker's coach has not assigned any workouts since the Deep Blue TT, just over a week ago, and has simply told the wheelsucker to do what he wants, "ride your bike if you feel like it." Well, the wheelsucker has a somewhat addictive personality, and after two or three days off the bike, the wheelsucker NEEDED to get back on the bike! GIVE ME THE BIKE AND NO ONE WILL GET HURT!!!!

Another point that confuses the wheelsucker is when to ride a fixed gear and how. There seem to be different schools of thought on this. So the wheelsucker was a little lost as to what to do for a bike ride, and chose to ride the fixie because ... well maybe it was just that he had not ridden the fixie in awhile. So the wheelsucker rode the fixie on the Sunday ride, and when he heard about a MONDAY ride, he decided to use the fixie again, but changed the gearing from 44-18 to 44-17 so he would not be spinning QUITE as fast going down hills.

Stu Waring suggested the Monday ride. The wheelsucker had trouble getting out of work, but Stu, the amazing Amanda Wu, Ty, Jeff "Ace" McDermott and Alex Pline were all still waiting for him when he turned up at the Bike Doctor Annapolis parking lot. How could you NOT want to ride on such a nice afternoon!

Alex was NOT wearing his team kit, and it turned out that a sore back was keeping him off the bike. So Alex jumped on the team photographer role.
The wheelsucker is happy wearing Latitude/ABRT kit with blue socks (the wheelsucker prefers higher wool socks for fall training rides) and riding his matching Cannondale Capo with blue bar tape and blue Michelin tires. But the wheelsucker is NOT happy with his tummy bulge!


The Latitude squad rode out of the parking lot and turned right onto Bestgate Road, and there was the official Latitude photographer blocking the left lane (we already had the right lane blocked) taking photographs. NO WONDER Annapolis drivers are so aggressive towards us!
Less traffic on Ridgley
Rather than ride down Rowe Blvd, we made the left and then right onto Ridgley, quickly "zagged" onto Annapolis, went over the Naval Academy bridge and out the St. Margaret’s Road route.
It was just KILLING photographer Alex Pline to NOT be riding!

Despite being advertised as "we're going to the beach!", we did NOT turn into Sandy Point State park, but simply turned left onto East College Parkway, after crossing over route 50.

East College Parkway is easy; almost no traffic. College Parkway has more traffic, but a wider shoulder until it gets closer to route 2. It then gets interesting with lots of traffic and no shoulder, so we turned off it as soon as we could, used back roads to get to route 2, crossed it, and came back on the B&A trail, stopping at Asquith (our local version of Ilchester) to do the climb seated.

It was twentyeight miles round trip @ 19.5 mph. The wheelsucker was grateful for his 44/17, particularly going down the hills! He was bouncing too hard downhill to read the cadence on the bike computer, but was taking pulls at a cadence of 100+, and distinctly recalls holding 115-120 for some time while riding at the back while Ace took a faster pull.