Lunch Ride - NPC + Double BB Route

Strava: http://app.strava.com/rides/3774448


The NPC + Double Back Bay route is notorious for being fast and frantic, and today was no exception.  Vince made it back out after a 2 week hiatus since the Stagecoach, but you couldn't tell he was gone since he was helping to push the pace throughout.

Gary started things off though, as usual, and got the early jump on Bison and E Peltason...hence the segment through Anteater being named accordingly.  I kept the pace up behind him but a off the back, so it was nice when others came around on Anteater to reel him back in.  There were some sections where the group broke up a little bit, but we all managed to make the left to NPC together.

Vince and Shannon were ahead of me originally as we were going up, but I found a good tempo where I climbed past them just after the first light.  When I looked back, I saw that Adrian had followed and was moving at a pretty good clip where I decided to pace him for as long as he could hold it.  When Shannon made his way past us again, I broke the rule and decided to try and pace him up NPC.  At a couple points, I even took the front mostly based on momentum, but then I realized the error of my ways once he started to put the power down near the top where he snapped me off like a cheap bra.

Fortunately, Vince was just behind us and he and I regrouped on San Joaquin to work together and we ended up chasing Shannon after we got split up at a light.  We ran into him at the Marguerite light, but since it was a long one, everyone eventually did too.

Gary led us toward Back Bay on Jamboree, and it didn't look like too many people were interested in helping him out...ha ha.  I decided to relieve the guy from like 5 bikes back and got us on Back Bay Drive.  Gary, the trooper that he is, still pushed up to the front after and I advised him to save a little in the tank for the BB run since I knew it would be fast.

After Shannon got up front,  Adrian and Vin made a break before San Joaquin and Vince ended up going with them.  The rest of us had a pretty good head of steam coming up behind them though, and I think they eventually succumb to just coming back into the pack before the tight bend.

At one point, Shannon seemed to be up front for a while and since I was 3 bikes back, I asked (okay maybe yelled at) Mitchell (#2) to push up and relieve the guy and he did.  Nice.  Adrian relieved Mitchell after and managed to keep the pace steady in the process...after some convincing since I was right behind him.  Ha ha.

At we came up on Eastbluff, I'm glad it wasn't an all out sprint to the top because I was pretty spent.  Vince rolled up beside me with Adrian and Shannon there also, but they seemed to be getting ready for the upcoming Jamboree climb.

Shannon crossed the street ahead of us but Vince and I weren't too far back.  When we got on Jamboree, the 3 of us had a pretty good pace and managed to get together up the climb.  I was worried at one point I was going to drop, but shifting to a lower gear helped me get back on.

From there, it was just the 3 of us as we made our way back around BB for the 2nd pass.  We had a good pace and traded pulls Stagecoach style, but vince decided some unannounced crit training at the end would be good.  He broke away with Shannon and all I could do was watch.  Cool!

Luckily, I ended up meeting them at the light to go up California with my average being 22.2 at that point...I'm sure they had faster ones.  I jumped to the front as we climbed to keep the pace up, but ultimately ended up with a 21.9 (21.7 per Strava).

According to Adrian, the rest had stayed and worked together behind us also getting a good workout from this route.  Kudos.

Thanks for the training, gents.