Summer miles happen on the road. The early roll out catches the crickets and the heavy dew that settles just before dawn. Voices seem loud before cars join the party.
We meet at the coffee shop, as if there is any other place to meet, warm light spilling from the windows. And we mill in the parking lot and adjust our sleeves, retighten our shoes.
For a quarter mile or more we are a disorganized mess, everyone finding their position, settling in the saddle. And then we are together, a unit.
The paceline strings out quietly as we all come up to temperature, people pulling off the front to keep from doing too much too soon. The joking starts at the back and moves up the line. Only the pair with their faces in the wind remain quiet, their breath coming quick as we pick up speed.
We’ll go like this for an hour, get some distance behind us, before one shoots off the front to take the town-line. Then gaps start to open on the climbs. We slow down, even in the flats.
One has to break off to get to a kid’s soccer game. Another hasn’t quite worked up to this distance yet. The last out are the racers, tuning up for the Wednesday night crit, the Saturday road race.
We finish as a subset of ourselves, all of us solo acts as we hit our driveways or the steps up to the apartment.
Still others of us are mainly meditators, which is to say, we ride alone most of the time. No one to pull for, but also no one to draft behind. Riding time is thinking time. No need to ask the group if the unanticipated detour is worth exploring. No need to clear departure time.
Our fitness is our own. Our speed is irrelevant. We don’t dislike the group, but we ride to know ourselves better, to bring ourselves more clearly into focus.
We do that on the road, one mile at a time.