Monster Cookie Metric Century Redux

Another weekend and another great ride, the Monster Cookie Metric Century, put on by the Salem Bicycle Club. Salem is 45 miles from our humble abode and to be able to get there for an early start I wanted to leave the house no later than 7:30am. Of course I was awake at 4:30 giving me plenty of time to get ready. Unfortunately, we had to wait for the babysitters. They(2 teenagers from the neighborhood) didn't get to the house until after my scheduled departure time but my wife made up the time on the road. The weather was cool and partly cloudy but was expected to warm up to 65 degrees, so I decide on shorts instead of long-johns for the ride. This was my sixth rally I've participated in but it was my wife's first. She was clearly nervous about the ride because should had never been on the bike for more than 15 miles at one time. It appeared to me the topo map intimidated her. I reassured her that the ride was mostly flat and she would do just fine. We got to the start line around 8:30am, signed in and got our ride packet. While waiting in the queue for the bathroom I struck a conversation with the gent in front of me. I asked him if he'd done this ride before and he indicated he had. This gave me an opportunity to once agin placate the demons tormenting my wife. I tried to get info from him about the ride profile and to my relief he exclaimed "it's basically flat, the only difficulty came from a headwind on the return trip of the loop. My wife was definitely a happier camper. We'll we started off from the front steps of the Capitol building and preceded through the city streets out of town and into the country. I kept the pace down to allow for her to become more familiar with riding amongst others. She was doing quite well for a nubie. At first she thought she'd be able to finish the entire 62 miles but after about 12 miles she indicated she was getting winded. At that point we decide that she could take the return route after the first rest stop and she agreed. With an average speed while riding with my wife at 12 mph, I was getting a little anxious to get going. At this rate I'd be in the saddle all day, something I didn't want to do. So she gave me the go ahead to ride at my own pace and we'd meet up at the rest stop. This rally is quite popular here in Oregon attracting about 1500 riders of all abilities including a subset of cyclist I call the "Groupies". Groupies are identified by their attitude and attire. Their attitude is smug and elitist. I don't know if it is because they all where the same team jerseys representing the cycling club they belong to or what but something about them pisses me off. My goal as always is to average at least 15 mph for the duration but at the beginning I felt there would be no way I'd be able to accomplish this. Remember the guy I was talking to? Remember the headwind was supposed to get you on the return trip? Well he was wrong, the head wind was in my face. I knew the only way I could make the goal was to latch on the back of a group and let them drag me around. Riding into a headwind by yourself is not a good thing. I was getting frustrated because I would latch on to 3 or four riders and get on their tails and try to keep their tempo only to be dropped after a few miles. Then I'd catch up to another group and do the same thing only to find their pace was too slow. This seemed to happen over and over. Finally, I found somebody riding the same tempo as me, Russell and Rebecca. They were very nice and talkative which is something the "Groupies" fail at miserably. As we were riding, off in the distance you could hear the dragsters at the Woodburn dragstrip. I piped up and said "Cool dragsters". This set Russell off. Best I could tell was he was a big motorhead. He talked on and on about his trip to see the Long Beach Grand Prix and his day trip to see the open wheel guys at Portland International Raceway for testing. Evidently while we were talking we had inadvertently dropped Rebecca so Russell pulled over to wait and I wave bye-bye and kept on going. As I got closer to Champoeg(pronounced shampoo-ee) where the halfway point was the headwind abated so I could ride at my own pace without the aid of others. I took a 10 minute rest, ate some food at the park and headed back. Once I got back on the road, the headwind had changed direction. Once again it was in my face. My legs felt good but for some reason I didn't feel comfortable in the saddle. I couldn't find a happy medium. I think some of this had to do with me tinkering with my seat recently to relieve a problem I had with the little general wanting to take a nap during my rides. Any ideas out there? On the return trip I came across a 2 riders going just the speed for me. Next thing I know we're going 19 mph with no problems at all. We keep this pace up for several miles before I tired a bit and pulled down the tempo and was dropped. For the rest of the ride I was basically solo. Overall, I was quite surprised at my final average time, exactly 15 mph over 62.2 miles in 3:58 minutes. I remember and email exchange I had with Dr. KBJ last summer stating that riding on mostly flat roads can be just as hard as riding some hill and rollers. I wholeheartedly agree. When riding hills you at least get the chance to recooperate on the down hils but on flats there is no such luxury. BTW, the wife, in her first rally managed 34.8 miles averging 12.7 mph. Awesome stuff girl! The only downside was while waiting for me in the car, the wife killed the battery, this amounted to an extra few bucks for the babysitters. Oh well. All and all a good day. Another aside, this was my first metric century, a full two months before I thought I'd try one. Next on the agenda is the Reach the Beach on May 20th, but I suspect I'll sneak another rally in before then.