"We Own the Night"

Doug and Jeff Campbell heading up Kyle Seale.

Nate, Jim and Jeff.  Jim and Jeff had a bit of an advantage riding road bikes, with Nate and Doug on cross bikes.  And they took advantage of their advantage.

"Nice" little ride Tuesday evening thru Northwest SA.  Starting at Babcock/1604, steaming up Kyle Seale Parkway to Babcock, up Scenic loop to Boerne Stage Rd, back across Cross Mountain, a little diversion in Grey Forest, up Monarch into Helotes then back to start.

The climbing begins early on Kyle Seale.  Continues on Babcock, respite down Scenic Loop.  Climb up Cross Mountain to again recover on Scenic loop.  One last tough little effort in Helotes.

You can see from the heart rate data that we made a few efforts to drop each other (pretending we weren't natch.)

It had been over 5 years since I had done a "Tuesday nite with lights" ride.  One of the last times I did this ride, descending towards the end of Kyle Seale a deer ran into our group of 6 riders, jumped over Nathan (clipping him with his knees) and kicked Skokie in the kisser (chipping a tooth and cracking his helmet.)  No one crashed, very surreal.

The neighborhoods and traffic have picked up alot since then so the likelihood of deer is diminished.  The likelihood of suffering on Kyle Seale has not changed at all, I am somewhat happy to report.  It's amazing how hard that stretch of road can be.

Riding at night with lights is one of the coolest ways to cycle.  It is paradoxically safe as there are fewer cars on the road, you can see and hear them better, and with today's light technology they can't miss seeing you!  It is a nice change from riding during daylight that it can refresh your training for sure.

We only had 3 riders (Doug, Nate and I) Tuesday night.  (Jeff Campbell rode us into the ground Thursday nite in the above photos.)   I went really hard on Kyle Seale (the best way to not get dropped is to control the pace.)  Towards the top I took a 30 second phone call so Nate and Doug picked up the pace giving me the chance to go that much harder to catch back on.

Heading up Babcock was more of the same.  No one would admit it but the guy on the front was riding hard to dissuade the others from coming thru faster.  By the end of Babcock Nate heard the familiar Slauson grunt signaling that I was using the last of my tricks to stay in contact.

Up Scenic loop the pace was a bit more docile and we went right on Boerne Stage Road.  Unbeknownst to Doug and Nate if they had gone left, up Teuton Bouregard, they would have dropped me, I really had dug deep early in the ride.

We hammered it a bit over Cross Mountain, then left on Scenic Loop with little attacks on the risers back to Babcock.  Descending Scenic Loop was all Slauson, of course.  We took Kane's favorite little rolling diversion thru Grey Forest rather than just roll down Scenic Loop all the way to Helotes.

When we hit Helotes, there was some discussion of adding Tower View (didn't seem to be much interest) so we tackled Monarch instead - the next "best" thing.

Great ride, dense training, fun riding at night.  What more is there?