Mellow Saturday Ride with THE Todd Jacobs

Strava:  http://app.strava.com/activities/38014787

After racing last week and all the training that led into it, it was nice to go out and do a ride like we did yesterday.  The plan was to do something reasonable in the form of pace and reasonable it was.  It was just Todd and I, and I wasn't sure I'd ever seen Todd do a ride that was fairly leisurely but he was totally on board.  We wanted to ride and enjoy the sunshine, taking breaks, and just not being dead tired at the end of the ride.  In the end, 1 out of 3 wasn't bad.

It was suppose to warm up this weekend, so both Todd and I had donned our new kits with arm warmers, and I had on a baselayer underneath my jersey.  For the most part, we were dressed for the warmer weather.  Todd started from his house where the temp was around 62 degrees, but as he rode down Antonio and arrived at my house, he looked liked me when I arrived at the first SAG during the San Diego Gran Fondo on our first outing...frozen.  When we started to roll out, even riding down toward the bike trail that heads to Doheny was enough to have my fingers turn purple from being so cold.  According to my Garmin, the lowest temperature of the ride was 35 degrees.   No wonder.  Fortunately, it warmed up some by the time we got by the ocean and actually hit about 71 degrees as the high for the day.

True to his word, Todd was not pushing the pace at all and I think I now know what Hiroshi and Vin mean by conversational pace.  Todd and I talked the whole way down to Las Pulgas just at the top of Camp Pendleton.  There was hardly even a need to get a drink to that point because we were cruising for the most part.  We did wonder how come we didn't see too many riders out there while we were heading out and kept looking back believing that some would even pass us.  However, no one was out there to mix it up on our way out. 

On our way back, it was a different story.  We turned around at the gate near Las Pulgas and started up the hill pedaling at a little more decent pace as we made our way to one guy on a TT bike.  It wasn't like we were pushing it either, but we did catch up to him 3/4 of the way up.  At first, it seemed like he latched on so we upped the pace a little more as we made our way up to the second gate before the parking lot.  By the time we got to the parking lot, we were alone again. 

We opted to cruise again in through the state beach parking lot, and eventually, someone did come up behind us again.  We weren't sure if it was the TT guy again or not, but we started to pick up the pace again.  It was only Todd and I who were rotating to keep the pace up, so that also made us want to amp it up enough just to see if whoever latched on could hang on.  By the time we were in front of the power plant, we were once again alone.  We kept the pace up nonetheless all the way to Trestles just to make sure. 

We chilled as we rode through San Clemente, but by the time we got to the long protected bike lane stretch we ran into two older gentlemen who seemed like they were holding a pretty decent pace.  When we passed them, they latched on and seemed pretty strong holding our wheel as we kept bringing the pace up and up.  After I had taken a pull, one of the two passed me with Todd on his wheel and took a good pull too.  Then Todd took his breakaway pull where I had latched on, and we just snapped the guy off at that point.  It's how we roll.

We did end up hitting up the Cove hill in Dana Point after as well as go on Crown Valley to Alicia and Oso.  The weird thing is as easy as the first part of the ride was, we both felt tired from the antics we pulled on the way back.  I was almost ready to call it and make a right on Marguerite instead of going all the way up to Antonio, but I manned up and did the route I intended to do from the onset.   What a great workout.

 I hope we can get more guys out for casual rides like this more often.  We can push during certain parts of the ride to get some good training in, but still enjoy each other's company during and after the ride.  Todd, thanks for inviting me out and for the great workout as well as the great company and conversation.  Let's do it again sometime.