Forgive me mountain bikes for I have sinned. And I have sinned good. Today I went for a road ride with Todd and Duncan (and a couple of Duncan’s training partners). It was good, it was fun, and it was a great workout. I have never ridden my road bike that far before.

We had planned to ride the New Balance Half Iron Triathlon road coarse. After looking at the map I wondered what I had signed myself up for. Then I learned that the Half Iron did 3 laps. If I did one lap I would cover around 42 km, 2 laps gets you 67 kms, and the full 3 laps is 92 kms. Woah. More than I was expecting. I decided I would try for 2 laps, and see how I feel after that.

We met up at 8am at Hamsterly Beach near Elk Lake. Hitting the road I was a little nervous. It was a little chilly out, and I wasn’t sure on the entire route we were taking. This ride was supposed to be a relatively slow pace for the group. I just hoped I wouldn’t get droped too quickly.

It turned out I didn’t get dropped at all. I felt pretty good the entire ride despite my legs feeling very tight. They never really loosened up and maybe the weather played a part in that.

At one point I was starting to feel some pressure building, and I knew I would have to pull off the side and relieve myself. The next thing I knew Duncan was doing the same thing. Phew. The other three continued on then Duncan and I played catch-up.

The ride itself wasn’t too strenous. There weren’t any heinous climbs, and even if there were, I wasn’t worried about my climbing, I was more worried about my endurance. I was also worried about how my butt would hold up spending so much time on the saddle.

While coming up on the lap point I took stock of how I felt. I started to debate if I would do a second lap, then someone spoke up and said I was doing a second one. Ok, problem solved. I continued on.

On the second lap I was out front of our group, and I heard a strange noise behind us. I turned to see what it was, but others were in the way. Then I heard rider down. Uh oh. I slowed, looked for traffic, then turned around. Todd had a little spill, and was just picking himself up. His tires had dipped off the side of the road onto the gravel shoulder, and as he tried to get back on the pavement, his tires slipped, and down he went. He wasn’t too scraped up but he had a flat front tire.

I agreed to stay and ride with Todd while the other three continued their ride. After replacing the tube, we hit the road again. After that there was just a lot of spinning.

Once we got to the lap point I bid farewell to Todd (since he was planning on 4 laps), and I headed back to the truck.

According to my bike computer, in all I rode 68 kms, over a span of 2 hours and 47 minutes (average speed of 24.4 km/h). The max speed was 61 km/h (and I remember the hill it happened on too). In many ways riding a road bike is more scary than a mountain bike. Going 60 km/h on pavement, and not really being able to hit the brakes if something goes wrong is very scary.

Fun way to spend the morning, but I have been drinking water and eating the rest of the day!