I learnt that long ago, chasing an old family friend. It wasn't till I realised that it was too hard work pushing a big gear and dropped down a couple which increased my cadence that I found myself keeping up quite easily.
Of course the stronger you get the bigger the gear you can ride that way
Felt a bit queasy yesterday so went with the 17s but I seemed to be riding so much better that I felt pretty comfortable for the most part. Speed seemed a bit up on the group label but that's because we had Mr Avery on the front and he's one of those riders with only two settings - stop and go
My advice, Jon, ride with the 18s!It was especially hard going at the start as a few of us got split off the back by the bus just after the start and with the head wind and Jon and Brian going for it on the front, it took me awhile to drag myself back in to the group, thankfully a red light helped. On the whole the group was well behaved and we managed to pull it together most of the way down past Rusper Golf Course. I think it was a bit of a shock to the new guy, Duncan, but he seemed to be doing OK - definitely not off the back.
We were split apart on the Rusper drag as we had Jon and Brian on the front again but we all turned off at Partridge and got to the cafe to find only a few riders there. You see, Ant? I had expected that you would catch my group up after we saw you with the puncture. In fact all the groups seemed to turn up well spaced out - timewise that is, though I can't vouch for their state of mind
I think it's the first time in ages we had a head wind down to Charlwood.Of course, it meant we were blown nicely back to Coulsdon. I left fairly early with Nigel, Mike and Phil Hawkes - and was that a Peter? Peter was belting along and dragged us all behind until we dropped off at various stages though we all seemed to stay within a couple miles of each other. Phil and I stayed pretty close and I towed him from Redhill through Merstham and up the drag where we swapped places at the top. But Phil kept slowing down so I went round him and whipped it up a bit the road being quiet enough for a good bit of speed. We swapped round for a bit but I just couldn't keep up with Phil down the hill - gravity favouring the heavier rider and I just ran out of gears to push
It's no good, I have to ask. Steve, did you manage to excavate your bike out from under that pile?! I had thought about that problem in advance and had placed my bike in such away that there were only two bikes on top and were relatively easy to extricate mine!
