Not a good club run, even without the weather. As mentioned above, I thought 3 basic groups would be the best idea as there was so few, relatively speaking. Hence Keith left with a fast group and Mr Bayliss and girlfriend formed the 'slow' group.
Unfortunately that left a bit of a mixed lot for the 'middle' group - which was intended to be 17/18. We set out and immediately we had 3 or 4 who wanted the higher pace or more from the start. The rest seemed to struggling to keep up and even keep together so I managed to get to the front just before the motorway junction with the intention to pull things together a bit more so that we went over the junction as a good consolidated group. Only the majority of the group suddenly wanted to join the 4 off the front and suddenly shot past me and the other front runners. Now, I'm sure you'll appreciate from various things I've put on the forum, I am not exactly riding at my best and I didn't exactly feel brilliant yesterday, so couldn't respond as I'd wished to. It would've been nice if you'd just gone round to the front and eased back and made sure everyone was on or else waited till after the junction and said that you wanted to go a bit faster and I'd've been quite happy to split the goup or let you set the pace on the front keeping whilst ensuring everyone kept together.
That left 4 of us riding down and I thought we kept quite a high pace ourselves - I was still riding badly so felt the hills a bit
- but nobody seemed to mind when I suggested the left to Leigh rather than going straight on after crossing a very high Mole (the river that is). Unfortunately as we turned into the side road there was one of those innocuous looking puddles hiding a rather large pothole and both the front guy (sorry, don't know if I knew your name..) and Pete Hewitt behind him hit it as none of us could swerve out due to a car coming down on us. So it was that Steve 'The Shadow' arrived on his winter bike (that he'd only finished building that morning at 1.20am 
) to find us mending two punctures. Poor Pete had to go through two inner tubes to find one that would stay up.By the time all was sorted we were somewhat frozen as well as wet and with Steve's driving desire to get to the cafe for a cup of tea, I suggested taking the direct route to Charlwood from Leigh - again no overwhelming sense of reluctance
So we climbed up the couple of lumps at Mynthurst and the Fox Revived before dropping into the cafe to join the fast group there - the rest of 'my' group, I assume, had gone with my original suggestion for a ride by turning up Partridge and following the road round instead of turning right to go down Russ Hill into Charlwood.After a quick stop with no queues and no shortage of cake, apart from Pete having swiped the last of the chocolate cake we set off back home for a pretty uneventful ride back to Charlwood.
I had intended to stop and have lunch at the new cafe in Coulsdon but by now my feet were soaked through (despite overshoes - it comes up through the cleat holes) and frozen solid so I followed Steve's back wheel back through Wallington and spent an hour at home defrosting enough to get in the shower and start the process of getting ready for the ACC dinner
