In spite of having something that threatened to turn into a nasty hangover, I almost made it on time. Jorge and Moncho had agreed to meet outside of the Fuencarral metro at 8:30 AM, and I was only ten minutes late. The ride started well, if chilly; and by 10:30 we'd made it up as far as Colmenar Viejo, some twenty kilometeres north of Madrid. And I didn't die. I was sure that somewhere around Tres Cantos I would surrender and have to turn around, but I didn't. I made it all the way up to Colmenar, where we had a break and a sandwich and a breather.
Being that I'm usually one of the only (or few, if Claire's along) girls who go out on rides like this, I usually notice how few women are out on their bikes on Sunday afternoon club rides. What was unusual was that Jorge (who's from Colombia) and Moncho (who's Mexican) picked up on it, too: they also noticed that the riders tended to fall into two groups: either they were older men, dressed in washed-out Lycra shorts, looking to reclaim their glory days; or they were youngish guys, riding very expensive rides. And as we stopped at the side of the road to take a breather and have a drink, even the guys noticed it.
In the end, we counted 12 women. A dozen women among a good two or three hundred men, during the whole time we were out. And that includes the four girls on the tandems and the mother with a kid on the back of the bike.
On the one hand, it makes me think, damn! If I were to join a club and start racing, I could probably be one of the top-ranked riders in the entire community. In the entire province! I could be in the Top 100!
And then I thought, dude-ette, if there are only sixty-eight women competing anyway, that's not really a good sign....
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