FakeRacing, round 1

Tonight was the first night for the weekly DCC/BCD shop ride, aka the FakeRace (not the fakerace). The course is pretty straightforward: out 751, over to Kerley, up Mt. Sinai (oh ye of myth and lore), scoot around on Friends school to Cornwallis (hi Coach K!), then Kerley to Sinai (more myth, more lore), University Station to the final sprint on Old NC 10.

Got that?

Basically it's been roughly the same route since Chris and Adam Haile suggested that rather than go down Mt. Sinai, all the cool kids wanted to go up. Twice. Adam has long since moved on to bigger and better things (like Ohio), but the rest of us are left lugging our ample posteriors up the hill. Twice.

Today we had a smattering of BCCers: Ali and I showed up at the shop, and Linus met us there, having already done something like a double century (that's the scuttlebutt). (Rumors also had it that Brian was going to show up, but that are unconfirmed reports that he never made it back from Tennessee.) Chris met us out on the road, where it was basically us, half the Franklin Street team, and a couple of random guys thrown in for good measure. Not a huge crew, but not bad for the first outing of the year.

The ride itself was fine. Which is a gentleman's way of saying I got dropped. Not until the top of the second climb up Sinai (the weight of all the myth may have been holding me back), which wasn't bad for my fourth road ride of the year (excuses, excuses), but early enough to teach me that training is a good thing. Ali fell back around the same time, and Linus rolled off after sneering at our measly sub-30 mile ride, but Chris made the break and ended up in the chase group that tried but never succeeded in pulling in two FSCers that went off the front. I'm not sure how he did in the final sprint, but lacking corroborating evidence I'll say that he crushed them.

Chris and I rolled back into town for the obligatory post-ride rub of Major's nose and then hit the showers. Needless to say I'm tired, but it was good to actually mix it up a little on the road, even if the only mixing I was doing was with myself for the last five miles.