Tom H approached me a few weeks ago with the idea of co-leading a club ride, with him leading the faster group and me coming along with the slower group after, to pick up any of his that may have dropped. There's at least one other team in the club that does that, and they've been quite successful and have a substantial following. And, especially with my spotty prowess, it sounded like a good idea to be able to go a bit slower, but also (perhaps) to see some of the folks I used to ride with.
We set one for yesterday. Tom came up with a 42-mile route, starting at Village Park in Cranbury, and with a stop in Allentown.
Cranbury's a popular start location for the club; I think there were four rides going out within half an hour of each other.
I rode in from home. It took a while to warm up, but I figured I'd be riding stronger after I had a few miles in.
Tom took off with the faster riders. I had one who stayed behind with me... and I was grateful for it, because I never really warmed up on this ride. Near the stop, I asked if the other rider wanted to cut it a bit short and head straight to the stop. I was a little disappointed when he declined, and we took the "assigned" route to Woody's in Allentown.
Tom hadn't named the stop during the speech at the start of the ride; he'd only said it was about at mile 22. It turned out he had three riders off the front, and, when they didn't see the stop at mile 22 (it was a bit short of that; they'd already passed Woody's), they just continued at their pace back to the start.
Tom and his crew stopped at Woody's; the two of us rolled in some time after.
The east wind yesterday was stronger than I expected, and it felt like after the stop, we did nothing except ride into that strong headwind. My co-rider and I took turns taking pulls. I did the second half of the ride noticeably slower than the first.
When we got to the start, all but one or two of the riders in the faster group had left. I still had the five-mile ride home, so I fortified myself with a root-beer float from Gil & Bert's in Cranbury... and then rode home at a pace such that I would have been passed by a funeral procession.
Some days are better than others.