With the weather turning out better than expected we headed out and decided to stick to the main route but changed it up a little, today there was;
Jason,
Greg,
Dave,
Steve,
Harpo,
Reece,
Dylan,
Nige,
Karl,
Si,
James
Missing anyone?
Due to it being dry we headed out to Death Valley and followed the B4265 to Barry rather than the A48, we took in St Andrews Major, Dinas Powys, Penarth Rd and out to Rover Way where I thought I was choking to death as a massive fly tried to make its way down my windpipe.
We then made our way across the flats to Newport, around the Gaer climb and down to Bassaleg where we lost Si due to a mechanical where he couldn't continue ~ Hopefully you made it back Ok.
No too far before we got to Wick, out to Barry and across the flats we formed a paceline and a rotating paceline;
The key to a rotating paceline is that when the rider at the front of the advancing line clears the rider who is on the front of the retreating line, the advancing rider moves into the retreating line and softens up his pace. The rider who was behind him continues the pace of the advancing line until that rider switches over. The rider in the advancing line should NEVER surge. The idea is that you ride to the front and float to the back in a constant rotation. You change your speed by "soft-pedaling" as you switch to the retreating line and increasing your pedal pressure as you switch from the retreating line to the advancing line.
Source;
http://www.lostrivercycling.org/paceline.htmlFor the most part it was pretty good, some people do surge but when you take a step back and look at their riding style they typically surge or have strong accelerations so we may not always be the smoothest.
Lets continue to try this where we can, we can only get better and if anyone notices any issues then just point them out to each other so that we can try to improve
From Bassaleg we followed the route to Lower Machen, over Van Road and to Caerphilly for a coffee stop at Costa. Our Greg was feeling his recent holiday along Van Rd, too much polish sausage perhaps, but kept it going to Costa (and thanks for the coffee).
We left Caerphilly as a group and headed down to Nantgarw, Greg opted to go via the flatter route via Church Village where the group continued to climb to Pentyrch and then dropped down to Capel Llanilltern, Groes-faen and then to the Talbot Green roundabout.
At this point I peeled off and headed home, I can see the group passed Greg on the slog to Llanharan and it looks like everyone got back Ok.
Good ride today guys, enjoyed it, thanks.
