Is there any more universal cycling feeling than hanging on for dear life behind the fast folks? Reading this piece made our legs hurt, which is why we loved it.
This essay was originally posted by Escape member Jacob Tubbs on our members-only Discord. Jacob is a 47-year-old recovering lawyer and delusional amateur cyclist (his words, not ours) from Birmingham, Alabama, currently residing in Houston. If you have an essay or experience you think might fit on Escape’s pages, email us.
Cyclists are often delusional about the merits of our sport and our abilities to perform it, but it’s still true that cycling is uniquely great among sports in the way it allows people of wildly differing physical abilities to participate together. You will never run skeleton passing drills with Lamar Jackson, take BP with Shohei, or shootaround with Steph. If you go for a jog with Kipchoge somebody is going to be contacting your next of kin. But thanks to the miracle of drafting, bikes are different: if the terrain isn’t too difficult and the conditions are just right, with a little bit of luck and a lot of very clever wheel sucking and energy conserving, total amateurs can find themselves enjoying* an 80 mile training ride with much, much better riders – even pros, occasionally. I am the guy in the stands wearing the throwback Golden State jersey and suddenly I’m on the court and Steph is hitting me in stride for a 17 foot jumper. (I brick it.)
*surviving
All this is a way to explain how I, an exceptionally average 47* year old recreational cyclist, came to ride 83 miles mostly in the rain with a group of three other cyclists, one of whom happened to be a pro. And not just a pro — in fact, one of the very best professional cyclists in the world, EF Education – Easypost team member, Tour de France climbers’ jersey wearer, and UCI WorldTour professional, Neilson Powless.
*48 by the time you read this probably. Time is fleeting. Go ride.
If you care about cycling and don’t know who Neilson is, please do the reading. If you know anything about him, you know he is one of the most talented, versatile, and successful American professionals in the greatest generation of American talent in the modern era. You know he has worn the Polka Dot jersey and finished 12th on GC at the Tour de France, won one-day classics in Italy and Spain, and podiumed Flandrian cobbled classics. He bangs elbows and bars with the absolute titans of the sports – your Van der Poels and Pogačars and Van Aerts and Evenepoels, a.k.a. the pantheon of superheros currently obliterating the record books. Neilson finished 11th in the 2023 Glasgow Road Worlds, perhaps the hardest single day of road racing that has ever been raced. He is the real freaking deal. And on December 14, 2024, he was in Houston, Texas and needed to knock out a casual 200k.
It is one thing to be a bike dork and know all those things about Neilson Powless. It is entirely another thing to sit on the wheel of the guy who dropped Matej Mohorič and Tom Pidcock to win Gran Piemonte, and watch him tick over the pedals at 375 watts from 8 inches away. I did that today, and I have some things I’d like to say about it.
How it happened is: I’m in the process of moving to Houston, and I like to ride bikes, and it’s hard to do that outdoors here, and I’ve been here a couple weeks and haven’t ridden outside yet, and so I texted one of the few people I know here — terrifying yet exceptionally nice local Masters legend John Yoder, aka Terminator — to tell him I was in town and to see if he had any ride plans for Saturday. Lucky for me, he did: “Riding in the Woodlands… 7am start. Fast group.” Having ridden with Yoder, I know what “Fast group” means: he and his Shama teammates, plus a few other assorted local hitters, averaging 25ish mph (40ish kph) for 80 miles (128 km), give or take. This seems like a lot but I am jonesing for a hit of suffering. I bite, and then get the follow-up text which makes my blood run cold, and which will also burn 1000 new memories into my brain and body: “Be ready to hold on. Neilson Powless is coming with me.”
Oh. Ok. Well, that’s a different thing, right?
I give Yoder a non-committal reply to signal that I am absolutely, positively, going to bail on this ride. Fortunately for me, there’s a lot of rain in the forecast for Saturday morning, which I feel gives me a respectable face-saving bail excuse. But after telling a few friends about this idea — go ride with Yoder and Neilsen Freaking Powless, get dropped and lost 50+ miles (80 km) from my car, limp slowly home on busy, scary roads that I don’t know, possibly just drop dead on the side of the road from pretending to be a pro cyclist in a mortal’s body — everybody tells me the truth: this is an unbelievably cool opportunity that I may never get again, and being dropped by a WorldTour pro is still riding (sorta) (for a bit) with a WorldTour pro. How many times have I done that? Zero. How many times will I ever get a chance to? Probably somewhere between 0 and 1. I go downstairs and start packing my bike kit. The Woodlands is a long way away and 7 am is gonna come early.
As I drive to the meetup spot Saturday morning, I pray to all the gods that there will be a dozen-plus other cyclists joining for Yoder and Neilson’s little beatdown party. I need bodies between me and the Powless watt blowtorch — I need places to hide, and the more the better. Yoder tells me to expect 10-15, which is less than I’d like, but I’ll take it. Houston is the fourth largest city in America; there are a ton of very fast people here, and Yoder knows most of them. Surely we’ll have a big turnout to come ride with American hero Neilson? But on the way up, the rain that was supposed to clear out clearly hasn’t. The skies are a malevolent, heavy, gray mass, and a steady, misty rain isn’t so much falling as it is completely filling the air; the atmosphere is about 98% Gulf of Mexico, and it feels like it’s getting wetter by the second. In this saturated early morning gloom I pull screeching into the parking lot to find a grand total of three people: Yoder, his teammate Fabian, and Neilson Freaking Powless, resplendent in his EF – Easy Post kit, with rain gilet. I’m one of four. I am absolutely, positively, certifiably screwed.
I’m also late. For a number of dumb reasons I rolled into the lot with one minute to spare, and felt the skin-burning humiliation of making the guy whose job it is to race Tadej Pogačar wait on me to get my kit on. I threw everything I had in my pockets, grabbed the bike out of the car, put the front wheel on, and nearly faceplanted in the parking lot trying to clip in on wet pavement. Neilson, John, and Fabian were kind enough to pretend they didn’t see my category 6 Fred stunt. And just like that, we’re rolling.
Neilson compliments my shoes, which are a 10-year-old pair of S-Works 6s that he can probably smell from 10 feet away, and then makes a little joke about having the perfect number of guys — “We’ve got 4, 2 and 2!” I bark out a nervous laugh, but suddenly I’m not so self conscious about my late arrival or 10 year old shoes or 11 year old extremely un-aero bike. But as we work our way out of the Woodlands, Neilson’s 2 and 2 joke becomes reality: Fabian and John set up shop and go to work on the front, Neilson and I slot in side-by-side behind, and suddenly we’re best friends and he’s asking me what I do for a living and why I’m in Houston, he’s telling me about racing Coppa Bernocchi and Gran Piemonte, and I’m picturing myself chilling at the EF team table in the Mallorca training camp with Neilson and Sean Quinn, laughing with the boys after a long day at the office, and then suddenly my legs are burning because we are going 30mph. I look at my computer. We have traveled 1.6 miles (2.5 km). I resolve not to look at my computer again for a very long time.
We leave the manicured corporate confines of the Woodlands and break out into the great wide open of the Houston exurbs, a Texas-sized six-lane divided highway that rolls north and up, forever. Wide open, windy, 18 wheelers and lifted dualies blasting by at 80. It’s the Houston version of a Flanders cobbled berg. Yoder transforms into Terminator and winds it up to his all-day cruising pace, which I would describe as “unbearable,” but my legs are feeling surprisingly not awful, and I think maybe I can do this for a little while, or at least long enough to ask Neilson for a selfie later? Then Fabian comes through, which means the next guy up is Neilson, and Neilson is about to do an interval, and I am on Neilson’s wheel, and I am about to find out what that feels like.
Here’s what it feels like: Bad.
As we roll steadily up a series of endless stair-stepping rollers, Neilson has the decency to look over his shoulder to see if he has dropped us. He has not, but he has come pretty close. I am hovering around 300 watts in the draft, up to 500 w as we top a large bridge overpass, and I can’t do that for very long because I am not very good at bikes. At one point about 10 minutes into the interval I break my earlier promise, look at my computer, and see we are doing 28mph up a false flat into a headwind. Pros are different. But I’m getting just enough recovery to hang on, and eventually Neilson swings off and the pain subsides slightly. As he drifts to the back, Neilson offers a very friendly “Wow, strong group! I felt sure I was gonna lose somebody on that last bridge!” By “somebody,” everybody knows he means me, but I don’t care because I’m still here, and Neilson’s “strong group” compliment has made my heart grow three sizes, which I am self-reporting to WADA. I take a token five-minute pull to remind everybody I am still here (for now), part of Team Strong Group, and then I slink straight to the back where I belong to hide, and pray for a miracle.
We cruise northwards for long enough that I have the sensation we are covering lots of miles very quickly, and way too soon Neilson clocks back in at the front and starts blasting again. Interval #2 is locked and loaded. I am immediately, deeply, severely in trouble, and as we prepare to turn left onto a small county road I hesitate, thinking we’re waiting to let an oncoming car pass before making the turn. But Neilson is mid-interval so he ain’t waiting, so the three non-professionals are gapped a little right as Neilson is achieving escape velocity. I do what amounts to a full blown sprint to close back up to the guys, and even when I get back in the wheels, there’s no relief because we are doing – guessing conservatively here – 150 mph. I’m now pushing upwards of 350 watts in the draft, and my mortal form cannot sustain that effort for very long under any circumstances. The road we’re rocketing down is lumpy, broken, and covered in about half an inch of water, and we are traveling at something approaching highway speeds. I can’t see anything from the road spray, can’t breathe, and can’t close up enough to the wheel in front to get much of a draft; I am getting hosed down right into my nose and mouth by road spray that tastes of salt, hay, and cow poop. My number is up. The man with the hammer is here, and he’s got my name.
(My frantic sprint up to John’s wheel right before getting dropped is enough to get me the KOM on this segment of road, and I will take that to my grave. Undeserved KOMs achieved by wheel-sucking at great personal risk with zero honor are my thing.)
When I’m able to breathe sorta normally again, Neilson, John, and Fabian are gone. Oh well. I look down at my ride distance: 32.7. Welp. 60 miles (96 km) to go, solo. I have played the stupidest game, I win the stupidest prize. So it goes.
Except that about a mile later, Team Strong Group is patiently waiting for me, former member, at an intersection. I ask them to please, leave my broken shell of a body to die with dignity here on the side of a road in a pine forest somewhere 75 miles north of Houston, and just go, but Neilson won’t have it — he encourages me to hang in there, insists he’s done with the intervals for now, and that — prayer works! — his Di2 battery has recently died, so he’s stuck in his small chainring and 13-tooth cog. Hallelujah. I might just make it home today. How fast can he go with just the 39-13?
28 – 30 mph into a cross headwind in driving rain, is how fast.
The rest of the ride is more of this sort of thing:
- Endless purple gray black clouds dumping Olympic swimming pools of water on us,
- John trying to clean the mud off his glasses in the spray off Neilson’s wheel,
- Rolling into the lone store stop at mile 53 and chatting with another group of riders who are as geeked at seeing Neilson as I am about riding with him, Neilson smiling and posing graciously for candid shots,
- Pulling briefly up a hill and thinking “this is way too slow” and realizing I am sitting on 25mph,
- Saying audible prayers of gratitude with Fabian when John flats and we have to stop to fix it,
- Watching Neilson kneeling in the mud on the side of the road with his frame pump to air up John’s backup tube.
That sort of thing.
On one of the farm roads with its endless 90º turns around the edges of fields, we are all braking hard in the rain and broken roads and mud with zero visibility, except that I am on carbon wheels and rim brakes which I haven’t ridden in the rain in maybe six years, and I experience a new, awful, fear: that of being the guy who blows a corner and crashes out a WorldTour pro. I slide back a bit. At one point in the middle of a pain fugue I look up and observe that Neilson’s team-issue rain jacket is neatly tailored with darts up the middle, to give it a perfect, form fit with nothing to flap in the breeze. Because pro.
I form hundreds more little memories like this in the roughly three and a half hours of this ride, living out little kid fantasies while ripping through 80 miles of Texas in the rain, watching a guy I cheer for on TV spraying muddy water into my stupid grinning face.
But the memory that will stick with me, the one I’ll keep coming back to, is rolling back into the Woodlands side by side, 2 x 2 with Neilson Freaking Powless, just like he said we would. Team Strong Group, together again. The rain has finally stopped, we’re blasting past startled runners and bikers like an express train, everything in my body hurts or is blessedly numb, and we are cooking up the Woodlands boulevards like a house on fire and Neilson is smiling and chatting with me like we’re old friends and I am pretending I am not a good 20 watts over threshold and the Empty light has not been flashing for hours even though I cannot form words. And just when I think I’ve gotta admit defeat and go hide on the back again … everybody sits up. We’re back. Ride over.
Except it’s not. We’ve only done 83 miles, and it’s 42 miles back to Houston, so Neilson has to get going. We all fist bump, I ask for and get a quick selfie with him, and off he rolls, smiling, back home.
Did we do a good job with this story?