Great idea! And nice QB. I almost never do group rides (20+ people), but a fellow RBW-er invited me to a Grizzly Peak Cyclists ride in the Oakland/Berkeley/Orinda hills area, ~35 miles with 2700 feet of climbing. I do these routes and climbs all the time by myself, and generally consider myself a slow, meandering cyclists that is out for the sake of riding, but something came over me and I sped to the front of the pack on my Gunnar Sport (almost took my new Sam) and stayed there the whole ride. Felt pretty good. I was 3rd out of 25 people or so the whole time. I like that I now know that I can push myself outside of my 11-12mph comfort zone into a 14-15 mph one and not feel totally ragged after, I still had plenty of energy after. Though maybe the ride up Tunnel on my quickbeam 2 days prior helped warm me up.
Two observations from my weekend ride: 1. I love the Oakland / Berkeley hills. I've lived here 4 years and I still can't believe such amazing greenspace and parks that are within urban city limits. All my climbing up Tunnel road has definitely made me a stronger rider. 2. After getting to top of the largest and longest climb we stopped for a break and a handful of people were looking at my bike (which had grand bois cypres 700 x 33 tires) commenting about how they'd love a steel bike with 28mm tires for a commuter bike, which just seemed weird to me since I was on such a bike with even wider tires and it clearly was not a commuter bike. Not to mention I had been there waiting for 5 minutes or more before that group even showed up. I spend so much time on this thread and with other RWB-ers that I forget how much we stand out with our baggy clothes, steel bikes, wide tires, racks, and bags. Everyone was really cool about it of course, and no ill feelings either way. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
