Passed By

Went out for a road ride today, in the unaccustomed sunshine and dry air, sporting my new Bates jersey. Within the first ten minutes, two different riders turned onto my route ahead of me. The first one emerged from a side street about fifty meters ahead, Even though I had fresh legs I was unable to catch him in the course of two miles, before he veered off in a different direction. “Just as well,” I thought to myself. “Stupid to burn yourself out right at the beginning, trying to keep up with a stronger rider.” At this same intersection a different rider happened to join me. We waved and exchanged a couple of words. Then he put away his bottle and settled down into his aero bars and rocketed away before I knew what was happening. We were on a long straight with good visibility, and within the first mile I think he was about a half mile ahead of me. Sheesh. After a while I resigned myself to my middle-aged-guy-with-a-desk-job level of fitness and successfully gave myself a pep-talk about how nice a day it was and how I would be fitter at the end of the ride than I had been at the beginning, and never mind what other riders could do. In fact, I was feeling pretty good at about the fifteen mile mark. I was averaging about 19mph, which is very solid for me. There was not much traffic, and the brilliant sun was uplifting after our recent month of near-continuous rain and gloom. That’s when my loop started turning from north-east to south-east to south and ultimately south-west. This, as it emerged, was the direction from which a stiff breeze was blowing relentlessly, with brief intervals of fierce gusts. “Well, I guess that pretty much explains my pace on the outbound leg,” I realized with an inward groan, as my speed slowed drastically. For the next hour and a half I labored head-down against the wind. It felt like I was trying to ride through soft sand. Finally, as I neared home, at about the thirty-five mile mark, two twenty-something guys caught up with me and offered some cheerful conversation. “How’s it going?” etc. I muttered something about how I had been doing better twenty miles earlier. I think they were on the verge of saying something like “feel like a lift, old man?” As they started pedaling away in earnest, I made a last valiant effort to hang on the second guy’s wheel, hoping to poach a pull for the last couple of miles. I managed it for maybe two or three tenths before I fell back, quads burning. To add insult to injury, I looked up at the receding rider and for the first time registered the big polar bear and the single word “Bowdoin” emblazoned on the back of his black-and-white jersey.