After a sync up on facebook there were four warriors that made it for this training ride. Vinay, Nalla, Opendro and I. The two unsure warriors were Kiran and Sudhir. As opendro and I waited as silkboard Nalla and Vinay soon joined and we left for A2B for fiesty oily vada - The high carb diet when cycling :-P . Managed to take the elevated tollway and it was a nice cool breezy ride. Managed to capture a video and soon we were off the tollway and on the NH-7. At this point you must be delighted yay they finally allow cyclists on tollway. Actually ..NO. We did get talked about why we aren't allowed and after a pep talk with the tollbooth operators, left the tollbooth and sped towards Hosur. Quite a relaxed ride till then and then the adrenaline rush started to build up ever so gently. Being my first Cleat experience, I had to be wary and uncleat in a timely manner if there were to stop anytime. I tried to draft a truck at 46-50kmph for about half a km then fell back to catch up with my group. Just beyond hosur there was a downhill with quite a steep gradient and acheived the top speed of 76.5kmph. After about 3-4 kms a flat stretch and a Mahindra minivan at 70kph was to good to resist. I ended up drafting the minivan for almost 500mts at 70kph. Felt good and back to the CW clan as the roads got bumpy with potholes (not big but bad enough for roadbikes at that speed). Another downhill nearing A2B and I tried speed but only touched 60. I think the energy source was depleted and it was time to recharge the batteries.
Thanks to Nalla for sponsoring the breakfast at A2B. I was all for a pongal and vada then Opendro and Nalla talked me into having Idly vada AND pongal. Damn, my flat tummy now was gone and the "inflated tyre" revealed quite under the jersey. Moreso, Opendro helped me finish half pongal as the idly vada already was heavy. The tough part of this training ride was all for uphill. But this being my first cleated ride I wanted to enjoy every bit of it so any chance of uphill I stood up and pounded till the peak of every climb and switched to the low gears to relax till the others caught up. The power surge with cleats is very noticeable. The extra surge comes with the idle foot pulls the pedal up while the power is transferred on the power stroke (down stroke) by the other foot. Maybe pongal was weighing hard down on vada and not letting it release the instant energy. So at hosur each of us took gulped down 2 bottles of soft drinks (limca) and then topped up the water supplies. We stayed together till Bangalore tollbooth (attibele) after which Nalla and Vinay decided to proceed via Bagalur to Varthur. Meanwhile It was only Opendro and I till Jayadeva. We happened to relive the Brevet 600 moments. The last stretch or should I say the last 100 kms was a torture after the 500 kms. Krishnagiri to Bangalore was the toughest, yet we managed to fare better on the Brevet run compared to today's run. Thanks to Opendro for lending the Garmin forerunner to monitor my heart rate and calculate the other parameters like elevation gain loss speed etc. I still await feedback from the Cleated warriors manager ( Venkat) to understand the where there is room for improvement. More about this Garmin capture of the trip statistics here :: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/110228044
More pics at :: https://picasaweb.google.com/108786458769812949648/A2BTrainingRideAugust282011
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