recipes and ride reports

I owe this blog three years' worth of posting about the Portland Daytrip 400k, really, but for now, an anecdote from this year, because it still weighs on me and was the only slightly sour note in the whole ride. (Aside from the usual moment or two of "why the hell am I doing this to myself", of course.)

I was riding along in the early evening, feeling good, when I start catching up on a man on a (modern, fairly nice) hybrid, and pass him. A few seconds later, I hear whirring, and he blasts past me, frantically spinning his pedals, and pulls in front of me. A few seconds after that, he sits up and slows down.

Oh, good grief, here we go. I instantly start catching up. How long am I on this road for? Am I about to spend the next five miles doing this? But I'm gaining way too quickly to just settle in behind this dude, so I pull out and around.

"Nice job," he says, and I breath a sigh of relief. He's unlikely to be an asshole about this. I decide that merits a little friendliness, and ask him if he's having a nice ride, which he takes to be a query on its length, and proudly proclaims he's gone 20 miles and is almost done, and to prove it, slows and begins to prepare to turn off. He doesn't see my smirk as I tell him to have a nice day. I'm just shy of 200 miles into my ride, after all.

Why do people men insist on doing this? Catching up to say hey and be friendly, sure. But really? I'm slow. I'm even slower with 200 miles in my legs, although at the time I was feeling pretty great and it was flat; I was probably tooling along at ~15mph on the flats, averaging ~13mph overall around then.

Sigh.