BTW - that refrigerator looks like some sort of lab experiment with all the green stuff you guys have growing in there. Maybe you can get Syracuse to clean it since he's got nothing better to do than tell everyone what a great ride he is.
(Just kidding Steve!)
I have to say though, that Torpedo was damn tasty, and the 2nd and 3rd ones were even better! Thanks Noah!
So what’s to say, I was nervous as hell driving down to the shop last night. Not for any other reason than I’ve been off the bike for 3 weeks and didn’t know how my fitness would hold up against the regulars on the Tuesday ride.
As I’ve noted before, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older and have a penchant for certain flavors on Ben and Jerry’s, this ride has gotten exceptionally fast and painful this year. And I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to hang on before getting spit out the back.
The only hope I had was all the fast guys (and girls) would be at the beach this week and only the old guys like myself would be out there riding a 17-18mph pace.
One thing was true about this, a lot of the fast guys were missing, including troublemakers Tom Stevens, his cat2 protégé Young Greg, and the rest of his teammates. I keep wanting him to bring Paul Curley out to the ride again so I can see how really slow I am. Paul rode with us once last year and it was a trip seeing him do his thing.
So Tom’s teammates were missing
And the girl on the tri bike was missing too.
Things were looking up.
But there were a lot of new faces in the parking lot, and most everyone was wearing different team jerseys, which is never a good sign unless they’re going on the A ride, which most of them weren’t.
And we had the Worcester contingent there including the guys with the Barney Cycling Kits. Those were really cool!
According to fearless ride leader (FRL), it was suppose to be a fairly flat route, but it really wasn’t.
I don’t have the exact stats, but it was something like this:
47 miles
Average: 20.3mph
So the ride time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:20.
And the climbing, according to Garmin was 2700 feet, but it seemed like a hell of a lot more, especially the climb from Holden into Princeton which seems like 2000 feet of elevation gain on that one stretch alone.
Pulled out of GW at 6:00.
It was hot.
It was humid.
This was going to hurt, of that I was sure.
We rolled up Hamilton to the lights on Rt. 12. Half the group made it through, the other half didn’t. FRL wanted to attack, but we blocked him in while we soft pedaled up Washington until we were all together.
Usually the warm up last until we turn onto Pleasant St. before the pace picks up. But last night it got real fast as soon as we hit Pond St. By the time we hit Pleasant we were rolling fast enough that I was having difficulty holding a conversation with all my bike riding friends I hadn’t seen in several weeks.
Oh well, the conversations would have to wait, right where the gradient picks up is where riders started attacking, going for those KOM points, but it’s not even a categorized climb so there are no KOM points. Nonetheless it didn’t stop the usual suspects from putting the hurt on the rest of the group, I hate it when I think I’m riding strong and then one by one the other riders are passing me to the summit of Sholan Farms.
At the farm the ride slowed, for a couple of seconds before the pace went back up as we rode to N. Row where we stopped to regroup.
N. Row is fun ever since it’s been repaved. But there were a lot of riders up front making me nervous by the way they were riding the double yellow, and sometimes going over it. I don’t know about everyone else, but have no interest in seeing who would win the Bike versus Car competition because I’m pretty sure I know the outcome and it’s not going to be pretty.
Once we got to the bottom of N. Row we rolled right onto Rt. 12, well most of us did – there were several riders who didn’t understand what “Go Right!” meant and stopped in the middle of the intersection and then when they realized their mistake tried to squeeze themselves back into the group.
So what’s up with the noobs? The juniors, one on a lime green bike, the other sporting a Livestrong kit, these kids were fast. And strong. But they had no skills whatsoever so they were reprimanded for their sins. They seemed to get the message, a little anyway, but they’re going to be a Tuesday Night project for the rest of the year, getting these guys to ride smarter.
Once on 12 the train got rolling. The best, and fastest stretch of road on most of our rides, pure pain and suffering trying to hold the wheel in front of you, and then when you’re on the front it becomes even more fun trying to pull the train without letting up on the gas.
Everything was working perfectly as we rolled through Sterling Center and past my personal favorite package store “House of a 1000 nips” (whoever came up with that name is a genius and should be working at Los Alamos Laboratories instead of bagging nips in Sterling), but you’ve gotta pull for the underachievers in life.
Once we got past the House of 1000 nips someone pulled off with a flat. Right in front of the 2 Sterling cops hanging out on Rt. 12 with nothing better to do than watch 40 cyclist hanging out waiting on a flat repair. I bring this up only because one of the same cruisers would be hanging out in the same spot on our return back to the shop.
On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again – it’s a Willie Nelson song, but it was what I was feeling after what seemed like a 20 minute flat change.
And then we were rolling again, this would be the one and only flat of the night.
Rt. 12 taking the right past the Stone Church we rode into West Boylston and then took the left that would lead us up to Rt. 31 in Holden.
This is where the carnage began – one by one riders were getting spit off the back as we made our way up the 3 or so miles to 31. And the sad part was knowing this wasn’t even going to be the difficult part of the evening.
We all made it to the store at 31, rehydrated before the lonnnnnnnnnnnng climb up 31 into Princeton.
It started easy enough, the guy in the Yellow Jersey went off the front a bit, but no worries, he wasn’t going far.
And then I bridged up to him and chatted a bit,.
And then I heard Dr. Natalie say something about how civil everyone was being.
So me and Yellow Jersey looked at each other and started to pick up the pace, but no one was biting, they were all staying back.
And then the hill starts.
And I heard the unmistakable sound of carbon wheels rocking back and forth on the pavement.
Me and Yellow Jersey – “This can’t be good, I guess the civility is over”, as it was. I lost track of how many riders effortlessly rode past me, making fun of the slow guy going backwards – I really need to spend more time training on hills instead of in front of the television.
The one good thing about that climb is it levels out in certain places, and in one place it even goes downhill for a bit, but that’s just cruel because then you have even more climbing to make it into the center of Princeton.
Once in Princeton center we regrouped. It was hotter than he^^ so I decided to ride for a bit with my jersey unzipped.
That was dumb.
I didn’t stop to think the next 4 miles down 62 are all downhill and average about 45mph the entire way,.
Once I realized my mistake I panicked as I tried to stay away from the group, but not too far off so I could get back on the train as I worked to get my jersey zipped.
Success! Managed to bridge up to the back of the group and sat in enjoying the 3-4 miles of downhill into Sterling where we crossed 140 and then took that right that brings us out to the airport and eventually Rt. 12.
So we come to 12, take a right, it’s déjà vu all over again.
Really, the same portion of road we rode and the same cop is still sitting there talking to the same guy in a truck an hour since we’d last passed him. I didn’t know if it was real or if I was having a flashback from the 70’s. But others saw it too so it must’ve been reality.
So the next 10 or so miles were uneventful, hurt ourselves climbing up Chase Hill.
And then there was Dr. Natalie complaining like she always does, this time about being shit on.
I get shit on all the time, but I don’t let it get to me.
But the doctor wasn’t talking figuratively, she literally got shit on – like she thought a bug flew into her helmet, but when she reach up to get it out it was all gooey and slimy when she realized some bird dung came down from up above and hit her square in the helmet.
It’s supposed to bring good luck, so maybe you’ll come into an extra 4 weeks of vacation time at work so you can actually have some fun this summer.
Ho hum, the ride went on as we crossed 62 and then went down the road with the “Do Not Enter” sign at the top, that was good fun, flying down this twisty hill at 30mph, I think we scared the runner coming up the hill, he sure as heck jumped out of the way when he saw the 30 bikes coming at him.
And then onto Langden at a nice easy pace, everyone saving themselves for the finishing sprint.
I toyed with the idea of contesting it.
But I didn’t have the legs to go all in, and if you can’t go all in you’re better off staying out of it because if you’re like me the only thing I ever think about is if I lose contact with the wheel in front of me I’m going to get yelled at in a major way for splitting up the group.
So as the speed picked up I stayed on the back for as long as I could, no pressure to hold a wheel to prevent a gap from opening.
And then the gap in front of me opened.
And that was my night.
Until I found Peter a little up the road.
And then Mike the mechanic hooked on and there were three of us riding in a nice even rotation, no pressure, 10 second pulls, the group up the road looked close enough to catch, and they weren’t working together, and for a moment in time I actually had visions of grandeur that we could pull back the breakaway and win the green jersey.
And then I woke up and remembered the juniors were up ahead and they weren’t going to be caught by 3 Masters.
Hopefully the weather will continue to be nice and we can get a couple more 40 mile rides in before the days begin growing shorter, which of course they already are, but I’m not going to think about that for now.
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