Tuesday night ride report - 8/31/10

Besides taxes and death, I suppose the one other thing you can count on, at least this summer, if it’s Tuesday night it’s going to be hot.
Yesterday was no exception.
I got in the car and the thermometer read 95 degrees.
By the time I got to Westford it was 99.
Once I got to Leominster it was at 95 again.
Thank god because I told myself if it’s over 95 I am not doing this ride.
Which in hindsight would’ve been a good thing.

My ride (which is different from everyone else’s):
Time: 1:15
Miles: 24.93
Average: 19.8

Another good showing.
Several guys I hadn’t seen in forever including Tyler (Rwanda) and John Siena.
The A ride rolled out, WtF, Luchiano and Tom O convinced John Siena to ride with them. And he did. The guy’s got a lot more fortitude than I do riding that ride. Hopefully he’d been getting his training in while away from the Tuesday night ride.
The B ride rolled out. Typical for this time of year, had to pick a shorter route, so we ended up heading up Pleasant St straight all the way to Rowley Hill/ Meetinghouse Hill into Sterling, and then Rt 12 backwards around the resevior, 140 through West Boylston to 70 through Boylston into Clinton and back to the shop from there.
The warm up didn’t last long, as soon as we took the turn from 12 onto Washington the speed picked up. Cleared all the lights to West St, rolled onto Pond still moving along.
Once we hit Pleasant St I settled into a nice pace in the back 1/3rd of the group, not a good place to be.
Chit chatting with a couple others I looked up and saw the first significant gap of the night.
WtF, note to self, stay near the front on Pleasant St to keep an eye on the troublemakers.
Oh well, that’s what you get for falling asleep – time to start working.
30 seconds to catch on the back of the lead group. It didn’t hurt too much, but I did need to sit on the back to recover.
No rest tonight, another group of 5 or so opened up another gap – no more riding near the back, at least for the rest of the night.
I didn’t have it in me to bridge up, but I kept thinking of Tattoo Dave’s words that got me into a world of trouble on last year’s COVAC ride – “Sometimes you just have to put it out of your mind and go”.
On the steeper part of the climb this one took a little more work to close – about a minute and I was on the back, barely hanging on.
The Worcester contingent was there in force, (blue Giant TCR, red Fuji, and the guy on the Seven Ti bike) – I thought I heard them early on talking about keeping things fast, and they did their best to hold true to their word.
I suffered on the back of the lead group trying to recover, but there was no recovering. Natalie, Rwanda, Robert and a couple others were in the group.
I was able to move up a little to see who was doing all the work.
Rider of the night award, at least for the part of the ride I was able to do, goes to Paul Skerry.
This was Paul’s 3rd consecutive group ride in 3 days.
The 78 mile training ride a lot of us were on this past Sunday, and that wasn’t enough so he went on the Orchard Hills Monday night ride, and there he was on the tuesday night ride on the front hammering up Pleasant St like it wasn’t a climb at all.
Paul collected the KOM points as we passed Sholan Farms.
No slowing, fast down Heywood, no stopping at the 4 corners, straight all the way to the intersection of Rowley Hill.
Waited for the re-group before rolling out again.
Worcester guy on the blue TCR was way up front, but he was soft pedaling – I was on the front when I caught up to him, yelled for him to “Go!”, for some reason he pulled off to the left, yelled at him that “Go!” means get on the front and pull my lazy ass for a bit.
He got the message, was on the front riding hard down Rowley, pulled off so I could have the pleasure of taking my pull, I did what I could to keep it fast, I don’t remember if I pulled off or just got overtaken on the downhill of Meeting House Hill Rd.
Pulled into Sterling Center, just keep going, lots of miles to cover in a short period of time.
Two on the front, Rwanda and someone I can’t remember took their pulls (Rwanda also gets huge points for riding so hard after a long time off recovering from an Achilles’ heel injury).
We had the train steamrolling down 12.
I was stuck behind Natalie which isn’t a good thing (I’m trying to save myself for COVAC), as always she drilled it as we headed down Rt. 12 towards W. Boylston.
My turn, as I rode by Natalie commented on my shiny new patent black Specialized road shoes, they serve a dual purpose, you can wear them for riding, and if you remove the cleats you can also wear them with a black tux to any formal event. And I’ve also noticed a lot of the wimmin folk commenting on them so I’ve taken to wearing them to work as well where almost all of the women stop to have a look.
Oh well, back to the job at hand – keep the pace fast so we can get back to the shop before darkness settles in.
Coming up on the W. Boylston town line I half expected someone to attack for the town line sprint Green Jersey points, but no one bit.
Shortly thereafter I pulled off and let the rest of the ride pull through.
The grinding climb into W. Boylston was just ahead, I hate that hill, but it’s fun sprinting for the points.
As soon as we hit the hill riders were all over trying to position themselves to be first to the top, I had a very good line, I was feeling as strong as I’ve felt all summer, I would go for it, even though I knew my chances were slim to none.
And then it happened – mixing it up with the Worcester contingent I ran over something, the noise was horrible, unlike anything I’d ever heard on a ride before.
And then someone pointed the problem.
I broke a spoke.
Even if Noah had been on the ride there was no doubt, my night was over.

A HUGE thank you to Mark Muzzi who stopped to help.
Even with opening up the brake, and loosening the barrel adjuster it still wasn’t enough to get the wheel to pass through the brake pad.
Mark had one of those all in one tools with a 5mm allen key, loosened up the cable and it was almost enough to clear the brake pad. Almost but not quite.
Mark rode on to see if he could catch the ride, hopefully they waited for him but I knew the plan was to ride all the way to Cumberland Farms so I’ll never know.

To make matters worse I left my cell phone in the car so I couldn’t call for a neutral support vehicle.
Oh well, maybe Paul Stromberg was working late, it was a long shot but I pulled into the shop to see if he could set up one of his machines to cut me a new spoke – or maybe he had a spare bike at the shop? I was desperate, but Paul wasn’t there so it didn’t matter, I had to chug on back down Rt. 12 into Leominster, trying to keep the pressure off my seat (and the rear wheel which was way out of true).
Finally made it back to my car just as it started getting dark.

Someone please post how the rest of the ride around the reservoir went.