Roadies smarts

I went riding with my neighbor who is getting back into cycling. Collegiate Cat2 now much older and just getting back into riding. One day on the trainer then a weekend ride.

Me with my full blown periodized training plan, yada yada. He outweighs me by 40lbs too. We did a short loop yesterday and came up a decent hillclimb.

It's amazing watching someone who knows how to ride a road bike. They are masters at energy efficiency. All of a sudden he'd be several bike lengths ahead and I'd have no idea how he did it. The mentality of never losing a wheel is something I need to develop better. When I get dropped in some ways it is more of a relief. Instead of that proper mentality of doing whatever you can to get back on.

At the bottom of the climb I hit it hard, but no hard enough to make it difficult for him, so he was just tucked in behind me. Then later I just didn't have the gas and he slowly pulled up.

It's one thing if you are so strong that you can just get on it and drop someone. But it was worthless to pull hard at the bottom. Just like my mtn bike racing, I need to develop that better sence of pace and timing. Next time I'm going to stay in control until closer to the top.

It's interesting how it all changes when we get on the mountain bikes. In my element my efficiency at riding technical terrain allows me to create a gap w/o going too far into the red.