Bringing back old Memories from the 70's

On Saturday, I rode about 30 miles with two of my old racing buddies - Bruce G. and Tom(Turkey) C. and and Jeff, another strong rider that is a friend of Turkey, in South Bend. Bruce, Turkey and I used to work together at Rickeys Bike Shop in Mishawaka back in the mid to late 70's. We were part of a small group of local riders, including my brother John who formed the Team MBA bike racing team. I was never a very good racer but that experience was very memorable, fun and very formative for me. Bruce continues to race very competively in the Masters class and was on the US Para-olympic team for a couple of years, competing in the Netherlands. Turkey has "retired" from racing but is still a strong rider.

This ride was a lot of fun, and pretty darn fast. For the warm up portion, I think they found the steepest hills in the area to remind me of my cycling roots. I like hills but a little longer warm up on the flats would have made these a bit more enjoyable. The ride started at Clay High School, north of the ND campus and proceed northeast into Michigan, west around Barren Lake, thru Niles then back to the high school.

I was warned that there would be a sprint to the Niles, MI city limits sign but they didn't tell me which one and it had been 30 plus years since I had ridden the roads we were on. I figured it out though when Bruce did a loud "grunt" and started the lead out about 1/2 mile away from one I sort of remembered on the east side of Niles. With about 300-400 meters to the sign we were at 30 mph and my heart rate was in the mid 170's. The other 3 kept getting faster and faster and I had to back off before I popped a gasket. I ended up about 50-75 meters behind them. Hard sprints like this were kind of my specialty back in the 70's but three knee surgeries on my right knee over the years has left that joint with no cartilage between the bones.

As we were getting near the finish of the ride where my car was parked, Bruce started speeding up again, so I figured it was time for another sprint to the Clay High School sign. At about 100 meters out I went wide to the left and took off but they never reacted and in fact pulled up and soft pedaled the rest of the way. They got a good laugh out of it.

Overall average was about 18 mph, due to the early hills and riding thru the middle of Niles. I am sure this training ride for the 3 of them was only at medium to easy pace but it was on the upper end of my physical abilities.

Bruce and Turkey brought up some really funny stories from back in the day.  We talked about our current lives as well. It was nice catching up with them again after all these years and hopefully there will be more rides together in the future.