Another Vino Velo Ride

Nearly all group rides in the Philadelphia area start from the Art Museum, actually the fountain behind the Art Museum. Of those that do not, most start from the dog statue across the street in a small triangular one block park. There are a few other locations listed on various websites, but on the two occasions the wheelsucker tried those, no one else showed up. While there are multiple rides a day -- nearly hourly -- going from the fountain behind the Art Museum, the 9:00AM Saturday Vino Velo ride is well known and popular. And the tough Philadelphia cyclists are renowned for doing the ride almost regardless of conditions. So it was quite a surprise for the wheelsucker to be parked near the fountain at 8:55AM, getting ready to ride, and not seeing another rider. Surely the Philadelphians could not have been scared off by the somewhat-below-freezing temperatures, the ice in the gutter, or the forecast of "wintry mix"? Finally another rider rolled by and stopped to chat. It was a rider the wheelsucker had ridden with before, on a previous Vino Velo a few weeks ago.

"Super Brit"¹ is staying in a hotel in Philadelphia on weekends and doing consulting work during the week in various other cities. Since he is flying all the time, he rides a neat folding bicycle. While this may not sound like the greatest road bike, the bicycle has an SRM and drop handlerbars, and comes close to duplicating the position he has on his various road bikes (which are still in England).

One of the "rules" of the Vino velo ride is that one circles the fountain counter clockwise while waiting for other riders to arrive.

Super Brit and the wheelsucker accordingly circled the fountain and eventually Alex² turned up. While three riders -- two of them visitors -- was hardly representative of a Vino Velo ride, this did give the group one rider who actually knew the route, a key requirement. Alex, "Myrig" and the wheelsucker set off. Given the forecast the wheelsucker had brought his rain bike, his old Trek 1220 upgraded to 105 ten speed and a Powertap wired wheel, not one of his weight weenie race bikes. It took a while to warmup, as though Super Brit's SRM was reporting 1 degree C above freezing this was while riding past puddles that were clearly frozen solid. Once warmed up, and one the riders realized the crunching sound was from riding over salt, not crunching through ice, the pace increased, with Super Brit driving the pace most of the time, Alex taking over from time to time, and the wheelsucker working harder than he cared to and increasingly concerned about being dropped in some middle-of-nowhere spot somewhere northwest of Philadelphia. The wheelsucker is very good at wheelsucking, but it is probably worth pointing out that the salt on the roads was melting the snow and ice, so there was a lot of dirty water on the roads, and this dirty water was being flung up by the rear tires of Super Brit and Alex. The wheelsucker was turning brown/grey from all of this, and his sunglasses were slowly being covered. But the risks of being dropped in some middle-of-nowhere spot somewhere northwest of Philadelphia outweighed the risks of being completely covered in salt and grit spray, so the wheelsucker hung on, wheelsucking, breathing hard, and taking one or two very short pulls in case anyone was counting.

After riding back through Manayunk onto Kelly Drive, the three crossed the river and rode back to the Art Museum on a particuarly flat -- actually slightly downhill section. By this time Super Brit and Alex had been chatting awhile, and the wheelsucker overheard snippets to the effect that Super Brit was the equivalent of a cat 1 in England, and had a 52 minute 49k TT time. This was enough for the wheelsucker to accelerate enough to pull along side and ask how many watts Super Brit had averaged for those 52 minutes, "340 watts", was the answer! And Super Brit weighs about 130-135 pounds! Super Brit was driving the pace back to the Art Museum and the wheelsucker finally cracked and decided he HAD to take a pull or would not be able to live with himself, so after waiting sufficient time to hope that Super Brit might be tiring, the wheelsucker accelerated, pulled out, passed Super Brit and took a pull. The trouble was that to accelerate and get in front of Super Brit required northwards of 500 watts, and the wheelsucker felt obliged to hold at least 400 while at the front, and as you all know, the wheelsucker's time at 400+ watts is limited, severely limited actually!
A very short pull later, the wheelsucker pulled over, and Super Brit happily pulled through and continued. After waiting a considerable time for Super Brit to tire for real, the wheelsucker had another go; after all, they were close to the Art Museum, how bad could it be? The wheelsucker quickly found out when he slowed on a false flat and suddenly saw Super Brit go by easily, with Alex sprinting to stay on his wheel. The wheelsucker called down to the engine room for flank speed, but nothing noticeable happened, the gap opened and the wheelsucker watched Super Brit and Alex easily ride away. The only good news was that the end of the ride was another three hundred feet further, so the wheelsucker could claim to himself that he was merely cooling down after the ride.

1. Super Brit is actually a mid thirties Welshman named something that sounds like "Myrig" but is probably 27 letters long like many Welsh names. Super Brit started racing as a nine year old, stopped racing while at University, then took it up again. He is the UK equivalent of a cat 1. His TT time is apparently good enough that he has a shot of getting on the podium at the UK TT Nationals if he can ever make the race. Super Brit lives in a downtown Philadelphia hotel on weekends, and in hotels wherever his clients are, the rest of the week.

2. Alex is a mid thirties cat 3 who did not race last year. He rides for Chesapeake Wheelmen. He has won Memorial Hall in a lone breakaway. He is moving to Washington DC soon.