So I didn’t place in any races this year (so far), but I managed to win something yesterday. My biking and weight-losing bro Elden over at Fat Cyclist asked us to guess how many page views he’d get the day AFTER MSN pimped him on their “What’s Your Story” page (getting him 50,000+ visits), and I came the closest to the actual number of 4818. My good fortune nets me a very cool bracelet. Thanks, Elden and Mrs. Elden! I owe it all to my son, who caught a brief but nasty cold and kept me up websurfing Sunday night.
Just for comparison, good ol’ jls.cx had 222 hits from 29 unique IPs yesterday, and one of those was me. You people need to Get The Word Out.

So while I was out tooling around the back roads of southeastern Massachusetts, the embattled Tyler Hamilton was winning the Mount Washington Hillclimb up in New Hampshire. That’s a good story, but look just a little farther down the results and you’ll see Ned Overend, who wore race number 50 for a very good reason. Today is his 50th birthday.
According to the VeloNews article, his time was 5 minutes faster than anybody else over 40 has ever ridden the race. How’s that for aging gracefully?

Wow, that hurt. Once again, the Mount Greylock Century lived up to its reputation as one of the toughest rides on the east coast. This year the weather conspired against us; we had temperatures in the mid 90s and humidity to match. Here’s how things went down (and up, and down…)
Mile 23.1: Rest Stop 1, Summit of Mt. Greylock I’d forgotten how tough the first two miles of Greylock are. The countdown mile markers start about a mile above the visitor’s center, with eight miles to go. By the time I saw the first marker I was thinking “I can’t take another eight miles of this,” but the last eight aren’t like the first two. The grade flattens out and then turns into a brief descent before the final climb to the summit. As with last year, the mountain was wrapped in swirling mist, so I didn’t even have a nice view as a reward. I stopped to refill my bottles and pushed on, feeling strong. The descent was all nasty pavement and no visibility so I took it at my own pace, which is more like “Il Pollo” than “Il Falco.”
Mile 40.6: Rest Stop 2, Whitcomb Summit, Florida – The climb out of North Adams wasn’t as bad as I had remembered, but I still didn’t try to keep up with the guys who passed me on the way up. When I arrived at the stop, the sag wagon crew was just setting up shop. A small group of us stretched and checked out bikes as we waited for the driver to break out the cookies and sports drink. After a few minutes we clicked back into our pedals and tucked in for a nice descent.
Mile 56.5: Rest Stop 3, Hawley – After zooming through a river gorge that’s more reminiscent of Colorado than Massachusetts, we turned onto Route 8A and started the climb up to Hawley. This is the stretch of road that got me last year, so I was prepared for a battle. Fortunately, the hill provided some comic relief along the way:

• As is usual for rides like this, the course is marked with arrows spray-painted on the road. These let us know when we need to turn without needing to consult the cue sheets that we have stuffed in our jersey pockets, usually below the energy bars. On Hawley Hill, the road was marked about halfway up, nowhere near any intersections. The arrow pointed straight uphill and had a smiley face next to it. Thanks for the tip, guys.
• The local club had grafitti’ed the road in the best Euro-pro style. As I inched my way up the steepest section, this slogan went under my wheels in a slow-motion crawl: “BRAIN…TO LEGS….MORE…POWER!” At that point I was thinking “LEGS…TO…BRAIN…GET…BENT!”
• As we went around the last hairpin and the road pitched upwards yet again, I heard a voice behind me shout “Oh my f*cking God!” A few seconds later a very sweaty guy on a bright yellow Pinarello came past me, pedaling in slow motion (yet still going faster than I was). If I’d had any breath to spare, I would have laughed myself off my bike.

This year, I made it up the hill without cramping, flatting or crashing. Yay me.
Mile 70: Rest Stop 4, Rt 143, Worthington As I turned right onto Route 143 in Worthington and encountered another rise, my legs decided I needed to take an unscheduled break. The last few miles had been mostly uphill and lacking in tree cover, leaving me exposed to the sun and wind. My left leg gave me enough warning to get my foot out of the pedal before it told the rest of me to stuff it for a while by cramping from hip to ankle. The ensuing fall didn’t hurt a bit, but did leave me sprawled across the travel lane still stuck to my bike. My right leg had also turned into a solid but useless mass of overcooked meat and I was unable to move my heel enough to release the pedal on that side. So much for not cramping this year.
I wasn’t tremendously worried about traffic; my body had selected a nice, straight stretch of road to call it quits. Before I could get myself out of the situation, a couple of motorists stopped and helped me get to the side of the road. I sent them on their way as soon as I was upright, though as soon as I tried to get going again on that hill I wished they had stuck around long enough to give me a push start.
Mile 80: Rest stop 4, Peru I wasn’t feeling great after the cramp episode, but I did make progress. I actually stopped a little short of this rest stop to eat a gel, then pushed on to the real stop. At this point my GI tract was signaling that it didn’t need any more input, despite what my muscles might think. I drank a couple of bottles of straight water but couldn’t choke down any more food.
Mile 101: Start/finish, Lanesborough After some more up-and-down immediately after the final rest stop, the last nine, mostly downhill miles through Windsor and Dalton felt like I wasn’t pedaling at all. I attribute this to the fact that most of the time, I wasn’t pedaling. I finished in about 7:20, 80 minutes faster than last year but about half an hour slower than I needed to get back to Boston in time for my date. With my wife, smart guy.
I didn’t have any major equipment issues this year; I rode my usual road bike with a 34×29 low gear, which suited me well. I did develop a nice hotspot on my right foot, and I think I’m going to ditch the saddle for something a little wider. I’m not sure what to do about the cramps other than work on strength this winter. I tried some extra electrolyte replacement after the halfway point, but it didn’t seem to help much.
As of Tuesday night, my legs still feel like Guido worked me over with a baseball bat. I’ve done a couple of short recovery rides, but my calves and quads still hurt when I go down stairs. Maybe by Thursday I’ll be ready to train again, and in a few more weeks I’ll probably be ready to think about next year.

Those of us who are foolhardy enough to ride in nearly all weather know that rainy days attract flat tires like Roswell attracts conpiracy buffs. The best scientific minds in cycling have come up with two likely reasons for this association:
1. Rainwater lubricates glass shards, car-tire wires and other sharp debris, allowing them to cut more easily.
2. God hates people in tight shorts and funny plastic shoes.
Of course, yesterday was a bit rainy, and of course I flatted on the way to my customary Tuesday hill repeat ride. I had the exquisite pleasure of inverting my bike at the side of the road on my warm-up hill, struggling to remove my overly tight rear tire (a subject for another post, perhaps) while the rest of my club streamed by. At least I finished up before they came around for the second lap. I briefly considered just going home, but I continued around my warmup course and resolved to do my scheduled climbs.

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A confirmed bike nut such as myself would be thoroughly remiss if he didn’t take the chance to comment on the Tour de France. So, here’s my take on the Grand Boucle:
For the general classification (Yellow Jersey):
Lance Armstrong – amazingly, the “safe bet” for a hors categorie seventh consecutive win. Though he’s had fewer racing days than in any recent year, there’s no sign that his form has suffered. If Le Boss makes it to Paris, he’ll be on the top step of the podium. However, he’s not guaranteed to make it to Paris. I wonder if he’s used up his racing luck over the past six years.
Ivan Basso – revealed vastly improved time trialing skills in this year’s Giro d’Italia but succumbed to a stomach problem that cost him huge amounts of time in the mountains. Assuming he stays healthy and shiny-side up through the first week, he’ll be Lance’s biggest threat.
Jan Ullrich – Lance perpetually identifies Der Kaiser as his closest rival, but he has not shown the requisite ability to attack on steep mountain passes. T-Mobile has made a show of focusing on the GC win, dumping former multiple green jersey winner Erik Zabel from the Tour team. But I simply don’t think the formula will work.
Alexander Vinokourov – Ullrich’s erstwhile lieutenant is more likely to land on the podium than he is, in my estimation. He had a convincing stage win on Mount Ventoux at June’s Dauphin

I’m somewhat reluctant to admit that I had to find out about this from the Today Show this morning, since it pushes at least two of my buttons pretty hard, but I’m glad I did turn on the tube this morning. Soldier Ride is a charity ride created to support our brothers and sisters in arms who have been maimed in combat. Right now, a team of amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan are completing a cross-country ride. The Today spot was in Illinois. I got this from the journal on the website:

June 14, 2005 – After about 45 miles Lonny’s prosthetic leg started to irritate his stump. Rather than quit and ride in the RV, he took it off and rode the rest of the day on one leg. Enough said.

Indeed. I don’t expect you to donate to these guys simply because I did, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that there are still gaps in the support system for our troops. The VA and active-duty military medical systems are far better than they were during the Vietnam era but they are struggling to keep up with the stream of amputees who need months or years of rehab at Walter Reed or other specialized facilities, usually far removed from home. This imposes a tremendous financial and emotional burden on what is usually a young, struggling family. Soldier Ride and the Wounded Warrior Project stand in that gap.

Amateur road races, at least here in New England, are relatively rare compared to their criterium or circuit race counterparts. While there are no hard and fast rules, criteriums usually cover many loops of a short course, 1.5 miles or shorter. Circuit races have a longer loop, say up to 10 miles or so, and the number of laps drops appropriately. Road races involve either One Big Loop or perhaps a large loop followed by a finising loop.
Given my current (low) level of training and commitment to racing, I like road races quite a bit more than crits or circuit races. Road races place much less emphasis on cornering skill, generally have a much steadier pace, and offer a much lower chance of getting lapped and pulled. For these reasons I looked forward to the Cyclonauts race, hoping to redeem myself a little bit after my last outing.

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May 2005 was one of the rainiest Mays on record in Boston. We had a grand total of six sunny days, and we got rain on a few of those. Most of the weekends were gray, rainy and cold – fine for March, but really disappointing for May. So, when the forecast promised a sunny morning for the Wachusett Circuit Race in Gardner last weekend, I knew the field would be ready to rock. I signed up with two clubmates for the combined Cat 4/5 field, scheduled for 10 laps of the 3.4-mile circuit. Because the fields were combined I knew I’d probably be in over my head, but I have few illusions about my ability to win. After everything I’ve put my body through in the last decade or so, the miracle is not that I race well, it’s that I can roll to the start at all.

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To her credit, Elise didn’t balk when I told her I wanted to do a race.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” She didn’t say.
“What are you trying to prove?” She did not challenge.
“Don’t you want to meet your second child?” She failed to ask.
No, she’s far more tolerant than that. She simply said “You’d better be back by 1 since we’re having people over for dinner.” Leaving me with little choice but to sign up, show up, and hope I could hang on. I haven’t raced in a dozen years, and as I recall I was pretty miserable. But my training habits have come a long way since then and there’s nothing like a race to hold a yardstick up to your fitness. But, as I soon remembered, road racing is about more than just fitness.

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On Saturday, we set out before sunrise to drive to the airport and begin our trip to Las Vegas. Some of you might think that this is a funny place to take a three-year-old, but we have reasons beyond the usual; Elise’s parents live there. We lugged the usual complement of books, toys and food to keep Andrew amused on the six-hour flight to Las Vegas. However, this time I had also stuffed some bike clothes and my pedals in my bag. Though biking is far from the primary purpose of this trip, the lure of 50° weather and clear-ish skies was too much for me to pass up.

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