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06-21-07, 05:16 PM
It was 3 am on a Fri. night or Sat. morning depending on how you're counting. I was in Shirley, MA, in a pack with 15 other cyclists, dodging traffic as the bars closed out and released their drunks. Cars buzzed us for the next six miles. Horns honked and catcalls echoed into the distance. A car pulled up next to me, matching my pace, and one of the kids in the passenger seat yelled out.
"Hey! Where you guys goin'?"
"Vermont."
"Holy s**t! You serious?"
"Hella serious, guy. Going there and coming back."
"What? ... why?"
"To be badasses."
That got a laugh. Then he asked, "do you wanna race?"
"Sure, but I'll need a bit of a headstart to make it interesting. Why don't you sleep first and drive to Brattleboro when you wake up?"
"Ok, badass, I'll see you in Brattleboro. Later."
"Drive safe."
We never did see that kid again. Maybe I should've told him where in Brattleboro we'd meet him.
Superficially, the 2007 Boston 600k was not much different from the 600 that I rode last year. 380 mile out-and-back with 20,000 ft. of climbing. We'd ride out to Gardner, MA before jumping on Rt. 119 to Brattleboro, VT. From Brattleboro, it was north, over the Green Mountains and Stratton ski resort, to Manchester. Then. from there, west to New York state, before heading south and detouring back into Vermont to visit Bennington before turning around and doing the whole route in reverse. The main difference between this year and last was that, in 2006, our sleep control was in Sandgate, VT - 230 miles into the ride with 150 miles to finish the second day. This year, the sleep control was moved to Brattleboro, which mean that you had to go 290 miles before you could sleep, and you only had to do 90 miles on your second day. Those 290 miles, of course, include climbing a mountain. Twice. But, hey, we don't do this stuff because it's easy.
The other big difference was that we started at a minute past midnight on Saturday, instead of 4AM. That was nice because it meant that my girlfriend was able to stick around and see me off. We arrived a little early to make sure that I was setup properly and wouldn't forget anything this time around. But, even so, time in these things seems to disappear quickly, and before I knew it, Tracey, the organizer was giving us our pre-ride briefing and then sending us off. Somehow, I wound up riding with the lead pack of riders for most of the distance to the first control, then consciously let them leave me behind as they headed out to Brattleboro. I'm fine with keeping up on the relatively flat sections of the first leg, but knew better than to try and stay with them as we all headed into the hills of New Hampshire and mountains of Vermont. Instead, I found Jake and Emily, the two fixed gear riders that I rode with briefly on the 300k and 400k, and left with them. In our twenties and thirties, we were the babies in a group that averaged in age around fifty, and we got along relatively well. I'd wind up riding almost half of this 600k with them at my side, and regardless of whether I left a little before they did, or if they left ahead of me, we'd somehow wind up catching up with each other somewhere along the way.
We chatted about stuff through the night -- work, bike geekery, where we came from and where grew up, the standard battery of stories that one swaps with acquaintances who have passed that first threshold towards becoming your friend. The night passed rather quickly under those circumstances, and before I knew it we were in New Hampshire, and the sky had taken on the dim blue of an approaching dawn. We had just cleared Bliss Hill Road, a four mile dirt road stretch that was a 'feature' of last year's ride, and the rough terrain had shaken the computer mount loose on my bike, so I pulled aside to stop and retighten it. Jake asked if I wanted them to wait and I waved them on, telling them that I'd catch up. We obviously had a habit for doing that.
I rode the next twenty miles solo, quietly enjoying the empty morning streets and cool air. The forecast was calling for rain, but the worst that we had seen so far was a heavy damp mist that just made me think of British Columbia. All that was missing was the smell of cedar. As I passed the town of Ashuelot, I saw two forms huddled by the side of the road and saw that it was Jake and Emily, taking a nap. None of us had managed to catch a good night's sleep on this, and we all had to get rest wherever we could.
Eventually, I got to Brattleboro, 91 miles into the ride and feeling pretty decent. Eating was going well, legs felt fine, and all in all, I was feeling pretty optimistic about everything. I felt so optimistic, in fact, that I didn't waste too much time at the control before moving on, leaving just after Jake and Emily showed up. I told them that I'd probably be stopping for breakfast in Newfane, 11 miles up, and the same place where we all wound up getting lunch last year, and we could probably catch up then.
Of course, it was only after leaving that I had realized that I forgot to restock supplies.
Throughout the series, I'd been experimenting with different food choices, trying to arrive at something that balanced out what I liked to eat with stuff that was easy to eat on the bike. I was aiming for something that was pretty much half Sustained Energy and half real food, and had kept a bunch of ziploc bags with SE powder staged in my drop bag at Brattleboro. Grab half the reserve on the way out, grab the other half on the way in. Make up the rest of the difference with fig newtons, sandwiches and fruit picked up in various towns. It seemed like a good plan until I forgot to do the first step and realized later that I had to do the next 18 hour with only 5 hours worth of liquid fuel. Ah well, more tasty farmstands to pillage along the way.
Nonetheless, I was glad for the stop at Newfane, enjoying an egg sandwich and orange juice while refilling my water bottles and rationing out enough powder for a newly diluted bottle of Sustained Energy. Jake and Emily caught up with me outside of Townsend, just before we started the 10 mile climb up the side of the Green Mountains to Bondville. My left ankle was starting to twitch with pain as we continued to climb, and I wasn't sure why. Part of me thinks that my saddle might've been a little too high, causing me to extend my heel just a little too far on the downstroke, or perhaps it was a little too low and the achilles tendon wasn't being stretched on the top of the stroke? I couldn't tell for certain and was hesitant about tweaking other parts of my bike fit and just suffered through it until we got to the base of the Stratton ski resort. That was where our next checkpoint was, and also where I encountered Bruce, a fellow whom I rode with briefly on the 300 and 400, who was coming back to randonneuring after suffering a stroke ten years ago. Bruce had set a relatively fast pace on the way out, and I figured that I wouldn't seem him for the rest of the trip, so I was a little surprised to see him standing there and asked him if he was ok.
"I'm fine," he said, "just waiting for you and Jake."
Apparently, climbing the mountain had taken some of the wind out of his sails, and now he was hoping for a slightly slower group to ride with. I liked Bruce well enough and told him that I'd be up for going along. Given that he had been hanging out at the rest stop for the better part of half an hour before we showed up, Bruce was in a bit of a hurry to get on the road. Still Jake and Emily wanted to stop, rest and get a hot dog. It was 10:30 and I don't think they'd had a proper meal yet. I was still running on breakfast so figured I'd leave with Bruce and see the rest of them at the halfway mark in Bennington, if not before that.
The next 7 miles were a rolling series of small hills, as we followed a ridgeline before dropping precipitously down the side of the mountain, nearly coasting all the way to Manchester. It was on the coast down that I started to feel myself nodding off. With the exception of a brief one hour nap the day before, I'd been up for almost 30 hours now, and been on a bike for almost 12. I told Bruce that I needed to stop and take a nap, but he said that he was afraid that his legs would cramp up if he stopped anywhere for too long. Still, he shepherded me over to a park in Manchester, left me with a couple of caffeinated gels and told me that he'd see me later. I was asleep in ten seconds.
My alarm rang off fifteen minutes later, and I felt refreshed and ready to press on. I stopped off at a nearby farmstand and bought a small handful of harvest fresh cherries and kept them in a small pouch on my bike, hoping to ration them through the ride, but wound up devouring the lot before going 10 miles. The next stretch, from Manchester to Arlington, was a lot hillier than I remembered, and I wound up eating through all the cherries for little bursts of energy on each climb. I found Jake and Emily in Arlington Center as the two of them waved me down in front of a church.
Apparently, the church was having a fundraiser cookout and were selling hamburgers and hotdogs for $3.00 each. Sodas and water for a buck. The cook turned our burgers into a double for free because, "we looked like we could use it" and as we finished our meal and rode off, he yelled out, "watch out for those cars, now!"
To which I shouted back, "Well, we came from Massachusetts."
"Ah! Point taken! Good luck, then!"
The rest of the ride was the 5 mile dirt stretch along River Road, and the three of us reminisced about the families that we saw frolicking in the stream last year, and how tempting it was to just ditch our bikes and play in the clear, crisp water. Once we left River Road, we cruised along 313 and Rt 22, fighting a slight headwind to get to the halfway point in Bennington. As we entered New York, Emily rolled up to us and said, "you guys need to start talking, I'm starting to nod off on my bike again."
I've never been much for socializing on bikes, at least not while trying to ride quickly. Combination of wind noise and distance makes it hard to keep in conversation, but we were riding on a relatively wide shoulder, and it was easy to ride two abreast with a third slightly behind. So, we talked about why we started doing long distance rides and what songs get stuck in our heads after hours on the road, while Emily belted out various versions of "Summertime."
Eventually, we arrived in Bennington around late afternoon, and wound up lingering there for almost an hour as various other riders rode in and joined us. It was the halfway point and good time to do any impromptu maintenance. I had both bulbs on my generator light blow out somewhere after Gardner, and replaced those with spares that I kept in my kit. Others did light chain maintenance and cable checks. Bruce was lingering, again waiting for us to show up, as was Dave Cramer, another rider that I rode with briefly during the Boston 400 and Westfield 400. He started off strong, but looked a little subdued, resting against a tree for most of the time that we were there.
Eventually, with a little prodding from Bruce, seven of us left that control together. It was getting into sunset as we were leaving Bennington, and I was hoping for as much daylight as possible before sleeping in Brattleboro. Bruce asked me how I was doing and I mentioned my tweaked ankle. He sympathized and offered me some ibuprofen, and while I'm not normally one for taking medicine on a ride, the mere contemplation of tackling the Stratton climb one more time was enough to make me concede. We stopped at a Stewart's cola store in Hoosick Falls and I washed down the anti-inflammatories with some root beer, while Emily held forth on the virtues of ice cream as a long-distance nutrition supplement.
The ibuprofen was a good idea, but the root beer was not. My body metabolised the sugar and corn syrup pretty quickly and the following sugar crash had me sleepy and nodding off shortly aftewards. My cycling speed dropped and before I realized what was happening, the group had dropped me and disappeared into the distance. I was weaving dangerously as I dropped in and out of half-sleep, and it might've gone worse for that if not for a passing pickup truck filled with high-school girls yelling just as they passed me. I'm usually annoyed by people who specifically yell to startle cyclists, but for once I was glad for having jackasses in this world.
Awake and alert again, I picked up my speed and passed Jake and Emily as they stopped briefly to reinstall their lighting gear. The orange glow of daylight meant that we'd be lucky if we could start the Stratton climb before night fell. I returned to the dirt of River Road on my own, and rode that stretch solo before catching up with Bruce and two riders, one on a Rivendell Rambouillet and another on a custom Gilles Berthoud. They were also reconfiguring their lighting rigs, and we wound up riding together on our way into Manchester. The sun had set as we entered Manchester's town center, and in a few minutes it was as dark as pitch. All of our lights came on, all save one. My helmet's LED light had burned out of its batteries. Alarmed, I mentioned to the guys that we had to stop, but we weren't keen on riding around Manchester looking for a store, and figured that we'd just find one en route.
However, surprisingly there were no convenience stores on the highway leading out of Manchester, and so we started the climb up to Stratton, with highway traffic buzzing past us at 45 mph, and me without lights. My generator normally illuminates the road rather well, but I need to be travelling at, at least, 8 mph to get it up to full brightness, and climbing on a steep grade with 200+ miles of fatigue and a bum ankle, I was lucky to get 5 mph. So, I was navigating simply by the headlights of cars as they passed, until, finally, the Rivendell rider offered to loan me a trio of AAAs, and with that I was able to see the road surface ahead. This road, with its 6 mile, 1200 ft. climb, was certainly the toughest part of the ride last year, and that was before the darkness, the high-speed auto traffic, and the sleep deprivation. While I never actually thought of abandoning the ride at this point, there were a lot of moments when I just wanted to stop and sleep, but I knew perfectly well that if I did that, I wouldn't be getting up again.
Still, I made it to the top of the climb, and then lost most of my riding companions as we were seperated by some of the rolling hills between us and Bondville. My body was also starting to shut down as I was past being up for 36 hours, and I couldn't keep myself awake. All of my previous tactics -- eating more, sprinting, loud singing -- weren't working. I was too tired to sprint, and the singing only worked if I concentrated on it. One lapse in attention, one forgotten verse or lyric in "Tower of Song" and my eyes were falling closed. I fell asleep at least twice in that stretch, and only woke up when my bike veered across two lanes on a (thankfully) empty highway. By the time I struggled into the control at Bondville, I knew that I was in trouble.
Eric, the volunteer running the control asked me how I was doing and I said, "I'm trying to decide if it would be safer to nap in a ditch or on the road shoulder, and I think that's probably not a good place to be in."
"I got a cot."
"Can I sleep in it?"
"That's what cots are for."
"Can I sleep in it instead of riding 30 more miles to Brattleboro?"
"if you want."
"but you wouldn't recommend it, would you?"
"Not particularly. It's a field cot in a 7-11 parking lot. The amenities are ... shall we say ... substandard."
"Can you wake me in 15 minutes then?"
"Sure thing."
The others from my group -- Bruce, Jake, Emily, Berthoud guy -- were all at the checkpoint, and I barely said 'hi' to them before crashing on the cot that Eric set up.
Eric woke me with an apology saying, "I'm sorry, but you told me to work you up in 15 minutes." I'm not sure if that's because I made some unremembered offense while I was still in the middle of waking or if he's just used to randonneurs being surly and abusive when they're woken up from a nap. Nonetheless, I got up and tried to focus on what I needed to do get back on my bike. My clothes felt damp and rancid -- culmination of a day of sweat cooling down in 15 minutes of sleep on a mountaintop. I walked into the convenience store bathroom and gouged out my contacts with fingers that felt numb and clumsy, then fumbled in my gear bag for my glasses. I splashed some lukewarm water on myself and felt somewhat refreshed ... or, at least, refreshed enough to go 30 miles to some place where I could get some real sleep. At least it was all downhill. That's what I kept on telling myself.
It wasn't all downhill, and the parts that were a descent were nullified by the fact that my fender somehow got knocked askew earlier in the day and was rubbing up against my tire, acting as an impromptu brake. I, of course, didn't realize this until 20 miles in, when I stopped underneath the pale glow of a street lamp to see why my bike was being so damn sluggish. All in all, it made for the longest 30 miles that I've ever ridden in my life. Nonetheless, I felt happy when I got to the Brattleboro stop. Tracey was there to greet me and serve up a hot plate of pasta. There was another girl eating nearby, her knee sporting some kind of field bandage and her face having that same haggard, thousand-yard stare that we all doubtlessly had. This had been a long night for all of us. It was 2:30 am. I had been on the road for 26 hours. It had been 42 hours since my last full night of sleep. But, we were at the motel, we could sleep and hopefully awake with better bodies for a new day. Tracey pointed out my drop bag, and after a long hot shower, I changed into tomorrow's clothes, unrolled my sleeping bag and promptly passed out.
I was woken up at 5:30. It was grey outside. The rain that they had been forecasting for the entire weekend had arrived. Tracey told us that reports from Bedford was that skies were currently clear. "So, if you want some sunshine," she said, "you should leave now and finish." Not that we had much of a choice, the checkpoint was supposed to close at 7 am. The next checkpoint in Gardner would close at 11. After a quick breakfast, transfer of fresh supplies to my gear bag, I was out of the parking lot by 6. 5 hours left to cover 46 miles. It's a trivial speed for road cyclist with fresh legs on flat terrain. But I felt like crap and I knew that there would be at least three significant climbs between here and Gardner, and that the route out of Royalston was going to be a constant series of rollers. My left ankle was in distinct pain and the day's ibuprofen dose hadn't kicked in yet. The rest of my body was stiff and, before we forget, it was raining. Yet, whinging wasn't accomplishing anything, so I stayed on my bike and rode home.
Fortunately, for all of the things going against us, the one nice thing that we had that morning was a tailwind. With that, I was able to put away the first sections of Rt. 119 comfortably, and even conquered the first of my ogres, the big climb outside the Four Corners store, with relative ease. It was at Four Corners that I was once more re-united with Jake and Emily, as they had stopped there for a bit of rest after the hill. Together, we made our way into Massachusetts through the dirt of Bliss Hill, before I left them behind on one of the longer descents into Royalston. They were exhausted and since one can't coast on a fixed gear bike, they had to take the descents pretty slowly.
I wound up doing the rest of the Royalston segment with Berthoud guy and his Rivendell friend, and we swapped pulls and navigation duties as we made our way back into Gardner, arriving at 10:30, half an hour before the control close, and affording ourselves 5 hours and 30 minutes to finish the ride within cutoff. I stopped in a Dunkin Donuts briefly for an egg sandwich and ice coffee, then took off, waiting for no-one and aiming just to finish this ride as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, Jake and Emily caught up with me again just outside of Shirley. As she passed me and offered to take a pull on the paceline, Emily asked how I was doing and I just said that I was ready for all of this to be over. "Yeah," she said, "me too."
We didn't chat much after that, focusing simply on directions and hand signals. Conserving as much energy as possible and diverting the excess to our bikes. As the relatively flat routes that we were given through Shirley and Ayer gave way to hillier sections in Harvard and Littleton, it became more difficult for us to stay together, and ultimately they pulled ahead of me as we entered Concord and turned on to Pope Road.
Cyclists on the road grew more common now as we entered the local roadie hub of the Concord town center. Everyone was out on their Sunday club ride, going to or from Walden Pond or Great Brook Farm or the farm country of Lincoln and Sudbury. As I turned on to Lowell Road, I heard the courtesy call of "on your left" as two road cyclists passed me, looking fresh and eager. At first, I was happy to let them go, but then, as I saw that they weren't pushing that fast a pace, I began to think, "oh man, I can totally take these guys." So, pulling from whatever reserves I still had left (probably excreted by the Stupid Guy Competitive Gland) I geared up and sprinted after them, catching their draft, then pulling them for a couple yards until we got into the Concord Center rotary, and they turned off in a different direction. Which was good, because I don't think I could've maintained that pace for any more than a few more seconds, and by the time I rolled back into Hanscom to victorious cheers and ringing bells, I didn't think I'd have energy for much else besides sitting and drinking.
Still, the energy in the finish tent was festive, if not exuberant. We were done! We had finished and survived! My cellphone had run out of power somewhere after Gardner, and I couldn't call my girlfriend to arrange for a pickup. It was somewhere past 2 pm by now, and she had probably just finished the Tour De Cure 100k that she was doing. I briefly borrowed Tracey's phone, called up my sweeite and told that I was done and would wait for her. The next bit of time, I spent sitting in a fold-out chair, listening to the war stories and eating my way through a couple of bananas swathed in Nutella. My mind was only half on the conversation, the other half was looking over my shoulder, scanning the road for the car.
Eventually, she drove in, and I barely said goodbye to my fellows before stiffly jogging across the parking lot to hug, kiss and swap congratulations. I grabbed my drop bag, loaded my bike on the rack and got ready to go, then I heard a beep and turned to see Berthoud Guy smiling at me from his car.
"Hey man," he said, "see you in Paris."
See you, Berthoud Guy. I promise I'll figure out your name before that day comes.
"Hey! Where you guys goin'?"
"Vermont."
"Holy s**t! You serious?"
"Hella serious, guy. Going there and coming back."
"What? ... why?"
"To be badasses."
That got a laugh. Then he asked, "do you wanna race?"
"Sure, but I'll need a bit of a headstart to make it interesting. Why don't you sleep first and drive to Brattleboro when you wake up?"
"Ok, badass, I'll see you in Brattleboro. Later."
"Drive safe."
We never did see that kid again. Maybe I should've told him where in Brattleboro we'd meet him.
Superficially, the 2007 Boston 600k was not much different from the 600 that I rode last year. 380 mile out-and-back with 20,000 ft. of climbing. We'd ride out to Gardner, MA before jumping on Rt. 119 to Brattleboro, VT. From Brattleboro, it was north, over the Green Mountains and Stratton ski resort, to Manchester. Then. from there, west to New York state, before heading south and detouring back into Vermont to visit Bennington before turning around and doing the whole route in reverse. The main difference between this year and last was that, in 2006, our sleep control was in Sandgate, VT - 230 miles into the ride with 150 miles to finish the second day. This year, the sleep control was moved to Brattleboro, which mean that you had to go 290 miles before you could sleep, and you only had to do 90 miles on your second day. Those 290 miles, of course, include climbing a mountain. Twice. But, hey, we don't do this stuff because it's easy.
The other big difference was that we started at a minute past midnight on Saturday, instead of 4AM. That was nice because it meant that my girlfriend was able to stick around and see me off. We arrived a little early to make sure that I was setup properly and wouldn't forget anything this time around. But, even so, time in these things seems to disappear quickly, and before I knew it, Tracey, the organizer was giving us our pre-ride briefing and then sending us off. Somehow, I wound up riding with the lead pack of riders for most of the distance to the first control, then consciously let them leave me behind as they headed out to Brattleboro. I'm fine with keeping up on the relatively flat sections of the first leg, but knew better than to try and stay with them as we all headed into the hills of New Hampshire and mountains of Vermont. Instead, I found Jake and Emily, the two fixed gear riders that I rode with briefly on the 300k and 400k, and left with them. In our twenties and thirties, we were the babies in a group that averaged in age around fifty, and we got along relatively well. I'd wind up riding almost half of this 600k with them at my side, and regardless of whether I left a little before they did, or if they left ahead of me, we'd somehow wind up catching up with each other somewhere along the way.
We chatted about stuff through the night -- work, bike geekery, where we came from and where grew up, the standard battery of stories that one swaps with acquaintances who have passed that first threshold towards becoming your friend. The night passed rather quickly under those circumstances, and before I knew it we were in New Hampshire, and the sky had taken on the dim blue of an approaching dawn. We had just cleared Bliss Hill Road, a four mile dirt road stretch that was a 'feature' of last year's ride, and the rough terrain had shaken the computer mount loose on my bike, so I pulled aside to stop and retighten it. Jake asked if I wanted them to wait and I waved them on, telling them that I'd catch up. We obviously had a habit for doing that.
I rode the next twenty miles solo, quietly enjoying the empty morning streets and cool air. The forecast was calling for rain, but the worst that we had seen so far was a heavy damp mist that just made me think of British Columbia. All that was missing was the smell of cedar. As I passed the town of Ashuelot, I saw two forms huddled by the side of the road and saw that it was Jake and Emily, taking a nap. None of us had managed to catch a good night's sleep on this, and we all had to get rest wherever we could.
Eventually, I got to Brattleboro, 91 miles into the ride and feeling pretty decent. Eating was going well, legs felt fine, and all in all, I was feeling pretty optimistic about everything. I felt so optimistic, in fact, that I didn't waste too much time at the control before moving on, leaving just after Jake and Emily showed up. I told them that I'd probably be stopping for breakfast in Newfane, 11 miles up, and the same place where we all wound up getting lunch last year, and we could probably catch up then.
Of course, it was only after leaving that I had realized that I forgot to restock supplies.
Throughout the series, I'd been experimenting with different food choices, trying to arrive at something that balanced out what I liked to eat with stuff that was easy to eat on the bike. I was aiming for something that was pretty much half Sustained Energy and half real food, and had kept a bunch of ziploc bags with SE powder staged in my drop bag at Brattleboro. Grab half the reserve on the way out, grab the other half on the way in. Make up the rest of the difference with fig newtons, sandwiches and fruit picked up in various towns. It seemed like a good plan until I forgot to do the first step and realized later that I had to do the next 18 hour with only 5 hours worth of liquid fuel. Ah well, more tasty farmstands to pillage along the way.
Nonetheless, I was glad for the stop at Newfane, enjoying an egg sandwich and orange juice while refilling my water bottles and rationing out enough powder for a newly diluted bottle of Sustained Energy. Jake and Emily caught up with me outside of Townsend, just before we started the 10 mile climb up the side of the Green Mountains to Bondville. My left ankle was starting to twitch with pain as we continued to climb, and I wasn't sure why. Part of me thinks that my saddle might've been a little too high, causing me to extend my heel just a little too far on the downstroke, or perhaps it was a little too low and the achilles tendon wasn't being stretched on the top of the stroke? I couldn't tell for certain and was hesitant about tweaking other parts of my bike fit and just suffered through it until we got to the base of the Stratton ski resort. That was where our next checkpoint was, and also where I encountered Bruce, a fellow whom I rode with briefly on the 300 and 400, who was coming back to randonneuring after suffering a stroke ten years ago. Bruce had set a relatively fast pace on the way out, and I figured that I wouldn't seem him for the rest of the trip, so I was a little surprised to see him standing there and asked him if he was ok.
"I'm fine," he said, "just waiting for you and Jake."
Apparently, climbing the mountain had taken some of the wind out of his sails, and now he was hoping for a slightly slower group to ride with. I liked Bruce well enough and told him that I'd be up for going along. Given that he had been hanging out at the rest stop for the better part of half an hour before we showed up, Bruce was in a bit of a hurry to get on the road. Still Jake and Emily wanted to stop, rest and get a hot dog. It was 10:30 and I don't think they'd had a proper meal yet. I was still running on breakfast so figured I'd leave with Bruce and see the rest of them at the halfway mark in Bennington, if not before that.
The next 7 miles were a rolling series of small hills, as we followed a ridgeline before dropping precipitously down the side of the mountain, nearly coasting all the way to Manchester. It was on the coast down that I started to feel myself nodding off. With the exception of a brief one hour nap the day before, I'd been up for almost 30 hours now, and been on a bike for almost 12. I told Bruce that I needed to stop and take a nap, but he said that he was afraid that his legs would cramp up if he stopped anywhere for too long. Still, he shepherded me over to a park in Manchester, left me with a couple of caffeinated gels and told me that he'd see me later. I was asleep in ten seconds.
My alarm rang off fifteen minutes later, and I felt refreshed and ready to press on. I stopped off at a nearby farmstand and bought a small handful of harvest fresh cherries and kept them in a small pouch on my bike, hoping to ration them through the ride, but wound up devouring the lot before going 10 miles. The next stretch, from Manchester to Arlington, was a lot hillier than I remembered, and I wound up eating through all the cherries for little bursts of energy on each climb. I found Jake and Emily in Arlington Center as the two of them waved me down in front of a church.
Apparently, the church was having a fundraiser cookout and were selling hamburgers and hotdogs for $3.00 each. Sodas and water for a buck. The cook turned our burgers into a double for free because, "we looked like we could use it" and as we finished our meal and rode off, he yelled out, "watch out for those cars, now!"
To which I shouted back, "Well, we came from Massachusetts."
"Ah! Point taken! Good luck, then!"
The rest of the ride was the 5 mile dirt stretch along River Road, and the three of us reminisced about the families that we saw frolicking in the stream last year, and how tempting it was to just ditch our bikes and play in the clear, crisp water. Once we left River Road, we cruised along 313 and Rt 22, fighting a slight headwind to get to the halfway point in Bennington. As we entered New York, Emily rolled up to us and said, "you guys need to start talking, I'm starting to nod off on my bike again."
I've never been much for socializing on bikes, at least not while trying to ride quickly. Combination of wind noise and distance makes it hard to keep in conversation, but we were riding on a relatively wide shoulder, and it was easy to ride two abreast with a third slightly behind. So, we talked about why we started doing long distance rides and what songs get stuck in our heads after hours on the road, while Emily belted out various versions of "Summertime."
Eventually, we arrived in Bennington around late afternoon, and wound up lingering there for almost an hour as various other riders rode in and joined us. It was the halfway point and good time to do any impromptu maintenance. I had both bulbs on my generator light blow out somewhere after Gardner, and replaced those with spares that I kept in my kit. Others did light chain maintenance and cable checks. Bruce was lingering, again waiting for us to show up, as was Dave Cramer, another rider that I rode with briefly during the Boston 400 and Westfield 400. He started off strong, but looked a little subdued, resting against a tree for most of the time that we were there.
Eventually, with a little prodding from Bruce, seven of us left that control together. It was getting into sunset as we were leaving Bennington, and I was hoping for as much daylight as possible before sleeping in Brattleboro. Bruce asked me how I was doing and I mentioned my tweaked ankle. He sympathized and offered me some ibuprofen, and while I'm not normally one for taking medicine on a ride, the mere contemplation of tackling the Stratton climb one more time was enough to make me concede. We stopped at a Stewart's cola store in Hoosick Falls and I washed down the anti-inflammatories with some root beer, while Emily held forth on the virtues of ice cream as a long-distance nutrition supplement.
The ibuprofen was a good idea, but the root beer was not. My body metabolised the sugar and corn syrup pretty quickly and the following sugar crash had me sleepy and nodding off shortly aftewards. My cycling speed dropped and before I realized what was happening, the group had dropped me and disappeared into the distance. I was weaving dangerously as I dropped in and out of half-sleep, and it might've gone worse for that if not for a passing pickup truck filled with high-school girls yelling just as they passed me. I'm usually annoyed by people who specifically yell to startle cyclists, but for once I was glad for having jackasses in this world.
Awake and alert again, I picked up my speed and passed Jake and Emily as they stopped briefly to reinstall their lighting gear. The orange glow of daylight meant that we'd be lucky if we could start the Stratton climb before night fell. I returned to the dirt of River Road on my own, and rode that stretch solo before catching up with Bruce and two riders, one on a Rivendell Rambouillet and another on a custom Gilles Berthoud. They were also reconfiguring their lighting rigs, and we wound up riding together on our way into Manchester. The sun had set as we entered Manchester's town center, and in a few minutes it was as dark as pitch. All of our lights came on, all save one. My helmet's LED light had burned out of its batteries. Alarmed, I mentioned to the guys that we had to stop, but we weren't keen on riding around Manchester looking for a store, and figured that we'd just find one en route.
However, surprisingly there were no convenience stores on the highway leading out of Manchester, and so we started the climb up to Stratton, with highway traffic buzzing past us at 45 mph, and me without lights. My generator normally illuminates the road rather well, but I need to be travelling at, at least, 8 mph to get it up to full brightness, and climbing on a steep grade with 200+ miles of fatigue and a bum ankle, I was lucky to get 5 mph. So, I was navigating simply by the headlights of cars as they passed, until, finally, the Rivendell rider offered to loan me a trio of AAAs, and with that I was able to see the road surface ahead. This road, with its 6 mile, 1200 ft. climb, was certainly the toughest part of the ride last year, and that was before the darkness, the high-speed auto traffic, and the sleep deprivation. While I never actually thought of abandoning the ride at this point, there were a lot of moments when I just wanted to stop and sleep, but I knew perfectly well that if I did that, I wouldn't be getting up again.
Still, I made it to the top of the climb, and then lost most of my riding companions as we were seperated by some of the rolling hills between us and Bondville. My body was also starting to shut down as I was past being up for 36 hours, and I couldn't keep myself awake. All of my previous tactics -- eating more, sprinting, loud singing -- weren't working. I was too tired to sprint, and the singing only worked if I concentrated on it. One lapse in attention, one forgotten verse or lyric in "Tower of Song" and my eyes were falling closed. I fell asleep at least twice in that stretch, and only woke up when my bike veered across two lanes on a (thankfully) empty highway. By the time I struggled into the control at Bondville, I knew that I was in trouble.
Eric, the volunteer running the control asked me how I was doing and I said, "I'm trying to decide if it would be safer to nap in a ditch or on the road shoulder, and I think that's probably not a good place to be in."
"I got a cot."
"Can I sleep in it?"
"That's what cots are for."
"Can I sleep in it instead of riding 30 more miles to Brattleboro?"
"if you want."
"but you wouldn't recommend it, would you?"
"Not particularly. It's a field cot in a 7-11 parking lot. The amenities are ... shall we say ... substandard."
"Can you wake me in 15 minutes then?"
"Sure thing."
The others from my group -- Bruce, Jake, Emily, Berthoud guy -- were all at the checkpoint, and I barely said 'hi' to them before crashing on the cot that Eric set up.
Eric woke me with an apology saying, "I'm sorry, but you told me to work you up in 15 minutes." I'm not sure if that's because I made some unremembered offense while I was still in the middle of waking or if he's just used to randonneurs being surly and abusive when they're woken up from a nap. Nonetheless, I got up and tried to focus on what I needed to do get back on my bike. My clothes felt damp and rancid -- culmination of a day of sweat cooling down in 15 minutes of sleep on a mountaintop. I walked into the convenience store bathroom and gouged out my contacts with fingers that felt numb and clumsy, then fumbled in my gear bag for my glasses. I splashed some lukewarm water on myself and felt somewhat refreshed ... or, at least, refreshed enough to go 30 miles to some place where I could get some real sleep. At least it was all downhill. That's what I kept on telling myself.
It wasn't all downhill, and the parts that were a descent were nullified by the fact that my fender somehow got knocked askew earlier in the day and was rubbing up against my tire, acting as an impromptu brake. I, of course, didn't realize this until 20 miles in, when I stopped underneath the pale glow of a street lamp to see why my bike was being so damn sluggish. All in all, it made for the longest 30 miles that I've ever ridden in my life. Nonetheless, I felt happy when I got to the Brattleboro stop. Tracey was there to greet me and serve up a hot plate of pasta. There was another girl eating nearby, her knee sporting some kind of field bandage and her face having that same haggard, thousand-yard stare that we all doubtlessly had. This had been a long night for all of us. It was 2:30 am. I had been on the road for 26 hours. It had been 42 hours since my last full night of sleep. But, we were at the motel, we could sleep and hopefully awake with better bodies for a new day. Tracey pointed out my drop bag, and after a long hot shower, I changed into tomorrow's clothes, unrolled my sleeping bag and promptly passed out.
I was woken up at 5:30. It was grey outside. The rain that they had been forecasting for the entire weekend had arrived. Tracey told us that reports from Bedford was that skies were currently clear. "So, if you want some sunshine," she said, "you should leave now and finish." Not that we had much of a choice, the checkpoint was supposed to close at 7 am. The next checkpoint in Gardner would close at 11. After a quick breakfast, transfer of fresh supplies to my gear bag, I was out of the parking lot by 6. 5 hours left to cover 46 miles. It's a trivial speed for road cyclist with fresh legs on flat terrain. But I felt like crap and I knew that there would be at least three significant climbs between here and Gardner, and that the route out of Royalston was going to be a constant series of rollers. My left ankle was in distinct pain and the day's ibuprofen dose hadn't kicked in yet. The rest of my body was stiff and, before we forget, it was raining. Yet, whinging wasn't accomplishing anything, so I stayed on my bike and rode home.
Fortunately, for all of the things going against us, the one nice thing that we had that morning was a tailwind. With that, I was able to put away the first sections of Rt. 119 comfortably, and even conquered the first of my ogres, the big climb outside the Four Corners store, with relative ease. It was at Four Corners that I was once more re-united with Jake and Emily, as they had stopped there for a bit of rest after the hill. Together, we made our way into Massachusetts through the dirt of Bliss Hill, before I left them behind on one of the longer descents into Royalston. They were exhausted and since one can't coast on a fixed gear bike, they had to take the descents pretty slowly.
I wound up doing the rest of the Royalston segment with Berthoud guy and his Rivendell friend, and we swapped pulls and navigation duties as we made our way back into Gardner, arriving at 10:30, half an hour before the control close, and affording ourselves 5 hours and 30 minutes to finish the ride within cutoff. I stopped in a Dunkin Donuts briefly for an egg sandwich and ice coffee, then took off, waiting for no-one and aiming just to finish this ride as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, Jake and Emily caught up with me again just outside of Shirley. As she passed me and offered to take a pull on the paceline, Emily asked how I was doing and I just said that I was ready for all of this to be over. "Yeah," she said, "me too."
We didn't chat much after that, focusing simply on directions and hand signals. Conserving as much energy as possible and diverting the excess to our bikes. As the relatively flat routes that we were given through Shirley and Ayer gave way to hillier sections in Harvard and Littleton, it became more difficult for us to stay together, and ultimately they pulled ahead of me as we entered Concord and turned on to Pope Road.
Cyclists on the road grew more common now as we entered the local roadie hub of the Concord town center. Everyone was out on their Sunday club ride, going to or from Walden Pond or Great Brook Farm or the farm country of Lincoln and Sudbury. As I turned on to Lowell Road, I heard the courtesy call of "on your left" as two road cyclists passed me, looking fresh and eager. At first, I was happy to let them go, but then, as I saw that they weren't pushing that fast a pace, I began to think, "oh man, I can totally take these guys." So, pulling from whatever reserves I still had left (probably excreted by the Stupid Guy Competitive Gland) I geared up and sprinted after them, catching their draft, then pulling them for a couple yards until we got into the Concord Center rotary, and they turned off in a different direction. Which was good, because I don't think I could've maintained that pace for any more than a few more seconds, and by the time I rolled back into Hanscom to victorious cheers and ringing bells, I didn't think I'd have energy for much else besides sitting and drinking.
Still, the energy in the finish tent was festive, if not exuberant. We were done! We had finished and survived! My cellphone had run out of power somewhere after Gardner, and I couldn't call my girlfriend to arrange for a pickup. It was somewhere past 2 pm by now, and she had probably just finished the Tour De Cure 100k that she was doing. I briefly borrowed Tracey's phone, called up my sweeite and told that I was done and would wait for her. The next bit of time, I spent sitting in a fold-out chair, listening to the war stories and eating my way through a couple of bananas swathed in Nutella. My mind was only half on the conversation, the other half was looking over my shoulder, scanning the road for the car.
Eventually, she drove in, and I barely said goodbye to my fellows before stiffly jogging across the parking lot to hug, kiss and swap congratulations. I grabbed my drop bag, loaded my bike on the rack and got ready to go, then I heard a beep and turned to see Berthoud Guy smiling at me from his car.
"Hey man," he said, "see you in Paris."
See you, Berthoud Guy. I promise I'll figure out your name before that day comes.