Rode With The Team Today

finally rode out to boulder today to ride with the natural grocers cat III/IV team who used to be called vitamin cottage (kinda still is, but the icon is alot smaller on the jerseys). met at my future teammate's apartment with kenny. my boy's thinking he's going to bust a move on the race scene. i hope so, but he needs to straighten up and fly right. he used to be a stud back in the 90s but it's a hard climb to be a pack finisher here in the category IIIs. he was supposed to ride today but his nutty dog got loose and he couldn't make the start time. since i'm advancing in years, i think this is the year i'm going to race 35+. met another teammate today rob, he's another 35+ too. so, if you count up all the old-timers, we could have numbers in the pack: me, kenny, chris (although he still thinks he's a 20-something), rob, and chip. basically, the 35+ races are all the bad ass pros from the 90s that i have to race against. strong and agile bike handlers; unlike the regular cat IIIs who are strong but can't round a corner at speed to save their lives. okay, the ride, so we meet at amante's-a boutique coffee joint-at 10 and we head out towards a hill town called lyons. boulder's kind of a mecca for world-class athletes, especially cyclists. as we're rolling towards lyons, tyler hamilton and bunch of pros from the newly defunct toyota-united team pass us and we all exchange pleasantries as they turn off to do some hills.
as we're climbing up past lyons towards estes park, we're going tempo. it's my turn up front and nobody's passing except 'til the turn around and the three hammeroids on my team fly past me. i didn't want to apply any more watts because i need to save my energy -and my legs-for the remainder of the ride. then a former teammate cruises past me and for a split second i thought of gluing up to his wheel; but then thought better...
at the turn around we blast it downhill and meet up with another former teammate at another coffee shop. he's with some hammeroids of his own and we take a circuitous route back to bolder and they're going pretty hard. we have dual, rolling paceline and i'm pedaling like madman to take my pull on the rotation. finally i have to echelon off the rear where the draft is but there's also people behind me doing the same thing. i see kenny up there pulling during his rotations and i'm impressed by his strength. this is about 3.5 hours into the ride and i blow like a zit on a teenage boy's face. i see the pack ahead in the distance and i see where they turn and i follow them. kenny being the good friend that he is, waits for me at an intersection and lets me draft of off him to avoid the sidewinds that's ripping my legs off (as if the torrid pace didn't already do so). i popped with another teammate by the way, but i couldn't match his pace after my medial collateral ligaments felt like it was getting the mother of all pinches whenever my legs upstroked.
kenny and i eat at one of Kenny's fave burrito joints: big city burrito. tasty is how i describe this place. one of the cool things too is that they have a whole slew of hot sauces to choose from. one of these hot sauces is called great white shark predator hot sauce. kenny drops two drops onto this burrito; i only drop one on my plate, dip my pinky in it, and tap the tip of my tongue. oh my god, it felt like someone took box cutter and sliced the tip of my tongue. i was in pain; but thank god it was only temporary-and kenny dropped two! long live big city burrito!
today was four hours of riding. it seems like my core training with the exercise ball is helping (along with riding in the hills near my house). no cramps (although it came close) and my legs were fine afterwards (albeit they felt like lead). i've been doing these exercises (along with crunches) where you really blast the glutes and hamstrings. i have to get up to boulder more often to get this type of intensity more frequently.