Tuesday night report 6/8/10

This is the information I pulled from my Garmin.
40 miles
1:58
Average speed was 20.5 (before I flatted and had to limp back to the shop)

Everyone knows how it ended (read the previous post if you don't).
Here’s the rest of the report.
Lining up you knew it was going to be fast, As we pulled out of the shop I had to ask if I wasn’t on the A ride, seriously there were a lot of riders from the A ride, some had excuses, Rob recovering from surgery was legitimate, others such as Andrew was just plain sandbagging.
Nonetheless it made for a fast ride which is always good.

Before we pulled out someone had an accident, a rookie mistake we’ve all made. I won’t say what it was, but we’ve all done it and it involved a yellow Pinerello and a woman who rides sleeveless.
What happened?

We left the shop, I heard Ernie getting excited over some dresses Natalie purchased on Newbury St., but he wasn’t actually getting excited over the dresses, he was telling Daren to act excited when he saw the dresses.
I could tell Daren needed more advice on this marriage thing so I stepped in to help with some helpful hints on maintaining a healthy marriage:
1. Act like you don’t care when you see the bill for the dresses
2. Leave the toilet seat down when done
3. Don’t leave your dirty bib shorts on the bedroom floor (especially if you ride commando)
4. They think it’s sexy when you do laundry, wash the dishes and run a vacuum, stuff like that.
5. Act like you don’t care when you see the bill for the dresses
6. no matter what anyone tells you, bigger really is better. Specifically when it comes to carets and bank accounts.

Daren was especially quiet the rest of the ride, I think my words of advice brought the reality of it all to him, being married and the committing of one’s life to another, dress shop bills, toilet seats, laundry, JCPenney bills, Macy Bills, bills, bills, and more bills.
Oh wait, that’s my life.
Daren, just remember to leave the seat down and you’ll be fine.

Down Hamilton to Prospect to the back roads that cut over to the road that leads us to Lunenburg Center.
Once we took the right turn the warm up was over.
As they always do the ride took off as we started our way up Leominster Rd for the 4-5 miles up to Lunenburg Center. Find a wheel, hang on, take a pull, fall back, repeat.
Found myself in a good group that included Andrew, Natalie, Rob on the six13, Alan Jr. (sorry, don’t remember your name) and a few others. We got a good line going which pretty much stayed together all the way into town.
From there we took a right and headed towards W. Townsend Rd, people took it easy drafting off Big Dave, Charlie was off the front doing his own ride.
No real damage done on that section, although we did need to hold up trying to get across Rt. 13.
Once across the road the pace lifted.
Considerably.
A group of 5 or 6 were off the front before I even realized the move had been made.
I wanted to be in that group, I went off and tried to bridge – damn it hurt, I was less than 50 feet from completing it when I gave into the pain and slowed.
That’s called an epic fail, all that work without being able to seal the deal.
Someone fell off the lead group so I had a wheel to ride, when I recovered we both worked to get to the top of W. Townsend where everything came back together before all hell broke loose on the descent into Townsend. Fast with riders all over the road, cars up, cars back, horns blaring – at least no one kicked up a stone into someone’s windshield this week.
Might as well enjoy the ride down, most of us knew what was coming once we got across 119.
Regrouped again in W Townsend before heading towards the hills.
Somewhere around Charlie’s neighborhood Dave Lystila (the Fin) dropped off – wasn’t feeling good, but I bet he was going to break into Charlie’s house and go for those aged filets Charlie planning on grilling up after the ride.
If you had to pick a spot to drop, that was it.
Made our way down Mason Rd, chatting it up with Andrew, letting him know he was getting bumped to the A ride because he’s the biggest sandbagger on the B ride.
Duncan was riding that steel framed Huffy with the down tube shifters hard.
And then he let it slip, wanting to know if there were any other Cat 3s on the ride.
He’d done a race the week before and wanted to get back into it.
Wait, he raced on the Huffy. I thought you could only race with a high end carbon frame and expensive carbon wheels – oh yeah, that’s the 5s, there are still guys racing Masters on old steel frames, and they love dropping carbon.
I need to rethink my strategy for Cat 5 races. Maybe I’ll stop at the Salvation Army this weekend to see if I can find an old Sears 10 speed, with toe strap pedals, or maybe flat pedals. And then go off the front of a cat5 race and prove to them it’s not about the bike.
It’s all about the batteries, right Noah?

Enough fun – the hills were in front of us.
It starts gradually but ramps up quick.
Gaps quickly opened, a group of 4 or 5 were away.
Another group of 6 or so chased.
Another slow death grinding it up the Barrett Hill Rd. At least I was in the chase group with some cover from the wind – if there was ever a point on the Tuesday night ride where I felt like just sitting up and quitting, it was climbing up that hill.
Keep turning the pedals, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, find a rhythm and keep the pace. It kind of worked.
Up the road I saw the rider, but I didn’t know what was going on, just some dude in shorts and a tee shirt out for a leisurely ride, but this was a recreational rider, this guy rode the riders up front right off his wheel, dropped them like they were standing still.
The pain and suffering continued as the next part of the climb began.
3 off the front, Andrew, Brandt and Alan Jr., 3 of us chasing but there was no way we were going to close it, they were flying up the hill.
The 3 of us worked well, myself, John on the red/ white Tarmac, and the guy on the silver/ black Cannondale (FCC kit?) – each of us taking our pulls, peeling off and getting back on but still not gaining on the riders up ahead.
Somewhere near the top silver Cannondale clicked down several cogs, sonofabitch, I couldn’t believe he was going to make a move and leave his group behind.
But alls fair in love and bike racing and with about 200 meters to go he took off leaving John and myself watching him ride off to the top.
Regrouped at the high school.

While we were waiting for the regroup, chatting, I realized something.
Brandt is one of the most brilliant people I know other than myself. He came up with this idea,
someone needs to map out a route with all the ice cream stands in the area and we’ll do a Tuesday night ice cream ride where we’ll replace the town line sprints with the ice cream stand sprints, if we plan it right we can probably hit at least 6 or 7 in a night, have a baby cone at each and then sprint to Kimball’s on Rt. 70 and top it off with a “Kimball’s special” before the final sprint to the shop to see who can get to the bathroom first.
Brilliant I tell you, simply Brilliant!
Well done Brandt. Our ride leader needs to follow up on this idea, Daren.

Ho hum, picking up where I left off, we headed down, took the hard left onto River Road, almost missed it with the sun in my eyes. Good thing no cars up.
Over the next 5 or so miles the roads seemed to get progressively worse as the speed seemed to get progressively faster, I was hoping there’d be no frames exploding on roads worse than the cobbles of the European Spring Classics, the worst section being the last ½ mile before coming out to 119 in Ashburnham.
Oh yeah, I finally got to know Kathy on the Colnalgo and Rob on the Six13’s names (the cyclocross contingent). I’ve only been riding with Kathy for 4 years, I should know her name by now and she usually gives me some good material for the ride report.
Crossed over 119, ah 101, my favorite stretch of road, it’s always fast and we always seem to get a line of traffic behind us. 2 years ago was my first time getting pulled over as a group by the Ashburnham PD, lucky for us we had Susan and Chet with us that night to explain to the cop the rules of the road.
I think he retired after being dressed down like that.
Anyways, again it was crazy coming down 101, although it did seem like we had an excellent line going, there’s no way of going too far right because the road is so beat up so the line hung closer to the middle of the road.
More stimulus money please!
Got down to 12 and regrouped. I tried reasoning with everyone to go slow over the next 6 miles into Fitchburg – as if that were ever going to happen.
Everyone had a smile on their face as we started the long descent down, everyone except Charlie who’s riding compact gearing, I think he needed to keep his cadence around 150 to hang on.
Fun times, just make sure you don’t lose the wheel in front of you or you’re off and need to catch on with the next group.
Everything suddenly came to a grinding halt. Forgot all about the bridge being repaired and the light the state put up to get people over the one lane. Of course we had to hit the red light, I think some riders made it across and never looked back all the way to the light near Gamache’s in Fitchburg.

Having to come through Fitchburg isn’t much fun, you can’t get any speed going, but we did find a way of getting riders out of the road. All you need is to have “ambulance back” and riders actually move to the right.
The rest of the ride through Fitchburg was uneventful as we turned and went over the 5th St. Bridge, down Summer St to Bemis.
I could feel my HR picking up, anticipating what was going to happen when we turned onto Airport Rd.
I had BIG plans in mind for that finishing 2 miles, especially the last 1.5 miles, I was thinking about where I was going to make my move, how I was going to solo off the front to pick up my first win of the year.

Dreams die hard.
If you want to know the rest read the previous post and the comments that followed.

The end.