The Final Tuesday Night Club Ride Of 2019- The Watt King Pulleth- -

The ride begins deceptively. As we turn onto Old Mill Road, the pace is chatty . Mark sits third wheel, hands on the hoods, looking almost bored. He is a shark circling the ice floe; he is simply deciding which seal to eat first. At the three-mile mark, the KOM segment appears—a two-mile rolling drag that spits on the concept of a flat road. This is the throne room.

I cross the line thirty seconds later. My lungs taste of pennies and regret. The group regroups at the 7-Eleven for the cool-down. Mark is already there, sitting on a curb, eating a cold gas-station burrito. He is not breathing hard. He has the audacity to smile.

Then he does the unthinkable. He looks back. Not with malice. With pity . He taps his power meter. He shakes his head, almost sadly. And then he accelerates. The ride begins deceptively

See you in April, Mark. We will be stronger. And you will still be the King.

For fifty-one weeks, the Tuesday Night Club Ride has been a democracy of suffering. We have rolled out at a civilized 6:00 PM, clipped in with our plastic fenders and blinking taillights, and pretended that cycling is a hobby of leisure. We have soft-pedaled through the neutral zone, told jokes about saddle sores, and dutifully pulled turns at 240 watts. But tonight is the Final Ride of 2019. The rules change. The veneer of civility is stripped away like an old tubular tire. Tonight, the Watt King pulleth. He is a shark circling the ice floe;

“Good pace today, boys,” he says.

Mark stands up. It is not a violent gesture, but a regal one. He unzips his wind vest (a power move, signaling he is already overheating from the wattage to come) and drifts to the front. The group, instinctually, falls silent. The only sound is the whir of freewheels and the thump-thump of suddenly terrified hearts. I cross the line thirty seconds later

When he goes, he goes like a dispensation of justice. The wattage spikes not from 250 to 400, but from 250 to a number that cannot be displayed on a standard head unit without an error code. His pedal stroke is a piston; his back is a flat table of cruel intention. For the first thirty seconds, we cling to his wheel like drowning men to a life raft. Then the elastic stretches. First, the weekend warriors pop, their legs turning to balsa wood. Then the crit racers, who thought themselves fit, begin to gurgle and fade. Finally, only three remain: the Watt King, his faithful lieutenant (who will be dropped in precisely 47 seconds), and me, clinging to the ragged edge of my anaerobic capacity.