After a long hiatus over the winter months, the #Velo7171 Wednesday Evening Ride is back! This week Adam and I kicked it off with the first of the season – making the most of the added evening sunshine brought on by the start of daylight savings time.

Sneaking out the door a tad early, I did my usual warm-up ride before swinging around to meet Adam at the Bakery for 5pm. Unfortunately we got our signals crossed slightly and missed each other by literally a handful of seconds. The chosen route makes it easy to regroup though and we soon caught up, quickly slotting into our efficient two-man paceline.

I’ve been doing a lot of solo speed work recently, so it was great to grab a wheel and share the load with some smooth through-and-off riding. I also got to see Adam’s brand new “chameleon purple” Cervelo in the flesh for the first time. Disc brakes, full Ultegra, a modern carbon beauty – plus it’s just so damn sparkly. Even the official press photos from Cervelo don’t do the paintjob justice…

There’s a fast descent with two sharp 90 degree corners on our course and you could tell by the way Adam was descending that those hydraulic disc brakes were inspiring confidence. Certainly out-performing my rim brakes and slick carbon braking surface.

With “peak hour” traffic lighter than usual (school holidays) we enjoyed a few trouble-free Bakery loops together. A great warm-up for the coming months when we’ll have a few more join us. At around 6pm we stopped into the Bakery car park for a quick debrief, then both peeled off in opposite directions to get home before sunset. I rolled back to the house with a little over 60km in the legs. Not too shabby for a weekday evening.

At the moment it’d be a little dicey to press on much later without lights, but each week the nights get longer and (hopefully) warmer. Here’s hoping for a fantastic summer!