This weekend was different all my training buddies were out racing Quassy Rev3 oly or half and they did great but I was a little bummed. Not being ready for those distances yet I resolved to make the most of it and head out with the asphalt green tri club intermediate group ride. Which I haven’t participated with in a long time. It was… Well I’ll tell you.

It began with me having to help lead the ride, which I reluctantly accepted, because there are club members who are scheduled to lead these rides and even though I have lead many rides I didn’t want the responsibility at first. While heading out we got separated because the leader ran a few red lights and left me with the group. Next I while climbing a tricky steep hill i dropped my chain, scheduled once a year (done). Then getting the over the GWB took forever, finally I pushed the group to try my favorite side road river road, which was excellent, it challenged everyone with hills and got the group to open up and assume different sub groups for the ride. This really helped as the talent on the ride was varied greatly. We got to the best part of this ride the big climb at alpine (shown here) it was great to have some fresh legs and motivate everyone up this climb. I would have stayed there and done hill repeats till my legs screamed ‘NO more’ but we pressed on, got our muffins and returned home. All said and done it was a sunny hot 5 hours for 55 miles slow and painful but worth it.

What do you guys do when you have training goals and have to deviate in order to help your fellow triathletes?