Kenny Espinoza finished our 33-mile ride a little early this morning when he broke a spoke on the foothills trail. Kenny had to call his wife for a ride. Lucky guy got out of having to pedal up the 1.2-mile Fruitland Avenue hill.
Kenny, the tallest and broadest member of the team, explained to me that bigger guys break more spokes. I figured that explained why my fat butt popped a spoke on recent mountain bike ride.
I was wishing my spoke had popped as we pedaled up the Fruitland Hill. About a ¼ mile up the hill I realized two weeks of distractions had taken their toll on my fitness. While I’d started to get pretty confident in my conditioning two weeks ago, after a 20-mile ride in Renton 12 days ago I spent very little time in the saddle.
As I pedaled up the hill, Russ Meyers pulled away as the hill sucked away my energy. Rick Beitelspacher and Scott Wagar, who did way better than me in keeping up with their training, were much stronger on the hill. And both were kind enough of drop back and check in on me as I struggled for the final 7 miles of the ride.
It wasn’t all bad news, however. As much as I struggled, we still covered the 33 miles in 1 hour, 55 minutes – about 15 minutes quicker than when we road the route four weeks ago.