Some professional riders showed for the ride last night.
Ever show up on your regular Tuesday night group ride and see people you don’t know? It happens all the time to us. Some times it’s a newer rider looking to try a quicker ride. Sometimes it’s a Cat 1/2 who is in town for the week and needs to get in his miles. So, it’s not unusual to see a variety of kits… everything from local teams to guys sporting the jerseys of their favorite pro teams.
Every once in a while the guys with the pro jerseys are wearing them for a reason, though. For instance, John Murphy showed up wearing his on one of our rides in 2009. Days later he wore that same jersey in becoming the U.S. Pro Crit Champion. The following year he was racing in Europe for BMC. While we can’t say our ride was the cause of Murphy’s success, we can’t say it wasn’t, either (this is the internet, after all… we can say whatever we want).
Yesterday we we lucky enough to be joined by several riders from the pro teams of Team Exergy and Wonderful Pistachios Pro Cycling. The cool thing about racing bikes is that there is no difference betweens the roads “we” train/race/ride on and the roads the Pros train/race/ride on. When they train/ride on our ride with us, it’s extra special. They could not have been more decent or polite. Thanks to those guys for showing up and helping us weekend warriors have something to tell our cycling friends about.
Both teams are in town for the Tour of Elk Grove this weekend. Even though we’d like to say that riding on our ride this week will help one of them win Elk Grove on the weekend, we’re not willing to go that far… yet. Good luck to both teams, though. We’ll be pulling for you.