Spring Ride #3

Morning all, I went to the Spring Ride on Sunday morning after a very unreasonable amount of sleep, not helped by the cruel timing of the clocks going forward. I arrived at about 8:15 and this seemed to be when most people were arriving, although if you fancy a coffee and a chat I would aim to get there by 8 as I didn't have much time between sorting my kit out and getting on the road.

Then came the crunch time... which group do I go in? I opted, safely, for group 5 as I thought I'd rather be held up than be the one holding people up - this was a mistake! The aim was to do 62 miles in 4 hours; this turned into 53 miles in 5.5 hours. I spent 3h46m cycling and the other 1h44m stood around waiting for the slower people to catch us up. After around 5 or 10 miles, one of the ride captains (who are very helpful and gurus on all things bike) took the slowest few back to the start as they were too slow and were going to hold us up. The next slowest few were allowed to stay with us but were asked to try and stick to the front, but they struggled, particularly on some of the more difficult climbs.

I now find myself in something of a quandary, do I make the bold move up to Group 4 next time and risk being "that guy" holding everybody up or do I stick with Group 5 and hope that it's better next time. The ride itself was great, I met some wonderful people, most were first time L2P'ers but some had done it before and one chap, Finlay, was a fellow Geoff Thomas rider and this was his third year. Sorry, no photos. I must buy a compact digital as there were some amazing views over the Surrey countryside.