No lollygagging tonight

We're down a man with Chris in Louisville prepping for his Ironman race but Bob decided to join us tonight and get some miles in. He rode over from his place and we decided to do a route that went over past his house so that he could split off on the return and just head home. Tonight I gave Justin the lead to make sure he didn't get a chance to draft like on Tuesday. I don't want to sound mean but the only way he'll improve is by making sure his legs and lungs get stressed. You know the saying,"no pain, no gain". So we headed up York Durham as usual and turned onto Bloomington and into a bit of a wind. This was good because I knew he was working now. Bob had fallen in behind me and was keeping up well even though he hadn't ridden in a couple of weeks. The pace was a little slow for me but I'd purposely fall behind Justin then pick up my pace to catch up and then repeat it. Mini intervals I guess you'd call it. We turned south on McCowan and headed down the hill with pretty good speed and as it leveled out I pulled out from behind Justin and Bob (who'd gotten between us) and hammered hard to see who could keep with me. That was a good hard sprint and Bob who'd been in and out of my draft during the ride and probably had some legs left tried to go with me but lost ground and I think Justin was just a bit too tired to even bother. At Stouffville Sideroad Bob and I got talking and Justin pulled way off into the distance and Bob made the comment of "let's catch him". That's all i needed go hear and I took off after him. Bob did too but I started pulling away from him and slowly closed the gap on Justin. No matter that you're faster than another rider, chasing someone down that has a 400-500 m lead on you is hard work but these intervals were helpful tonight. I finally caught him after about 3.5 km of hard chasing and backed off again to let Bob catch up to me. A couple of km late we split off from Bob and I took the lead homeward. For tonight's run I decided that we'd push it a bit more then Tuesday when Justin took it kind of easy. He had too good a kick then and I wasn't going to let him have another tonight. The whole run i kept edging ahead picking up the pace slowly and I could tell he was working harder tonight from his breathing. We did 5.75 km at a 5:29 pace and when I took off for the last 750 m Justin didn't follow. While I did that 750 m at a 4:00 minute pace I'd succeeded in pushing him just hard enough that he could finish well but not freakin do the last 50 m in a sprint.