One of my most embarrasing moments. I was pretty new to cycling but had a great motor from running. I could hang most of the way on the Simi ride in Socal that at the time had Thurlow, Tomac , Roy Knickman a bunch of other Pros that I could not identify. It seemed like every week there would be a huge attack in the same spot and me being slow to respond would suffer home with the stragglers. I was determined not to let it happen again.
We get to this general area and Knickman jumps really hard, throwing his bike like it is a final sprint. but this time I am latched on his wheel. It is killing me but i am not going to lose this draft. I look under my arm & the gap to the pack is huge 10 seconds at least. As i am having a hard time breathing just sucking his wheel i think how much longer can he do this?
I notice then, his arm reaching back behind him, moving up & down on his back, what is that the signal for RR tracks? wtf? oh, i see, he is going for his pocket. he grabs something and then makes this huge swoop across the road with his bike and sits up beside me "Gummy bear?" he offers
Then he sees the pained, out of breath look on my face and he is truly sorry
"Oh man i am sorry, You didn't think i was seriously attacking did you? Crap
here they come. Dude i am sorry"
As the pack sped by us Roy held back to try and help me latch back on but it was over. He then effortlessly moved all the way back to the front while i kept hyperventilating by myself otb. At the end of the ride when we regrouped Roy said he needed some more miles, would anybody want to join him for a reverse ride?(total miles 120+) I couldn't believe that a few of the guys went with him. I really got my eyes opened that day as to how hard some guys can push themselves on a bicycle. In my running career i had never suffered nearly as hard against some of the best distance runners in the US. And then this guy is going out and doing another lap of 60+ miles like he is fresh as a daisy...
The next week he was pretty nice, apologized again and gave me some good advice, ride at your own limit on the climbs, don't get sucked into someone elses pace and hang on for as long as you can, sometimes its slows.
He was right.
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