Shovels, rakes, and implements of destruction

Well, OK, not quite, but the D2R2 Randonee exposed us to the most eclectic, oddball collection of bikes I could imagine. In these days of cookie-cutter carbon/unobtanium racing machines, it was refreshing to be riding amongst a herd of Bruce Gordon's, old Raleigh's, countless MTBs fitted with rigid forks and skinny tires (including a 1988 Wicked Fat Chance converted to 700c!), Rambouliet's, and dozens of 'cross bikes with all sorts of unique mods. And after 10+ hours in the saddle around the beautiful, remote northwest corner of Massachusetts, no post would be complete without paying homage to Arlo.

You read that correctly, over ten hours to complete this ride. My optimistic estimate of seven or eight hours was based on thinking that even riding a cross bike on dirt roads, 13 mph should be fairly easy, and that would nearly cover the advertised 106 mile distance in just around eight hours. Well, 13 mph did not turn out to be too far off, as my actual riding time average speed was just over 12 mph, but three other factors made the day longer. First, I did not take into account the amount of time that would be spent at the stops. Having never done a randonee, I didn't know that the route would not be marked, and that part of the lure of these events is the navigational challenge of finding your way along an incredibly convoluted route using a "cue sheet." Well, Mr. Solobreak is rather far-sighted in his old age. I got a prescription for bifocals last spring, but never got it filled. I can see distance fine, but reading a cue sheet while on the bike is not possible. Even if I could, I didn't put a speed sensor on this bike, so I didn't have a distance measurement. KL, Meg, and JD had elected to take the 100k option rather than the death ride duration. This situation left me at the mercy of others for navigation. This was not too much of an issue, as after starting at around 6:10 am (just a few minutes late), following the dozen or so guys from Team Benidorm, I eventually hooked up with a group of three guys riding skinny-tired mountain bikes who knew most of the loop, and had the requisite handlebar-mounted cue-sheet holders. They were pretty hard to keep up with on the dirt descents, but were climbing at a good pace for me, so along with one other vision-challenged guy, we made up a quintet that stuck together for the final 80 of 115 miles.

That's right, I said 115, not 106. I'd seen a few different numbers published for the length of this ride, but the final route on the cue sheet totaled 115. At five minutes/mile, the extra nine miles tacks on 45 minutes to the ride. Combine this with needing to wait at the lunch stop, and other stops, for as long as my seeing-eye dogs cared to stay there (no point leaving without them), which turned out to be pretty long (we were at the lunch stop for a half hour). This added around an hour of downtime to the total. I don't have my exact finishing time, because my Polar ran out of memory after about nine hours (I was dumb and didn't shut off the cadence and speed functions, which still use up memory even though I had no sensors/readings), but I checked in at the finish around 4:30 pm, so I think my actual riding time was about 9:20, for an average of 12.3 mph.

Why so slow? Well that brings us to reason three: the route was fucking hilly! Again, the published figure of 11,300 feet of climbing is suspect, as my Polar registered 3900 meters by the time it ran out of memory at the top of Patten Hill. There were another 250 meters or so after that, so the real number might have been closer to 13000 feet. Normally, of course, you get a big payback in the speed department on the subsequent downhills, and there were a few 50 mph paved descents along the way, but much of the descending was on the same kinds of gravel and clay goat paths as the climbing, meaning less speed return on your climbing investments. I'm anxiously waiting for a ride report from climbing-stud, ultra-numbers geek Doug Jansen for two reasons, one because I know he'll have reliable data, and two, to see what kind of obscene time he completed the course in. I'm sure it was a few hours less than mine.

So what were the hills like? Western New England dude. Imagine doing the Mt A TT fourteen times in a row, except the dirt road is half as wide, and extends all the way up to the summit, and you have a pretty good picture of the terrain. Of course, this was scenic beyond description, and at some points the "road" was mountain bike/jeep double track. The low points on the course were all the river crossings, which seem to have been around 500 feet above sea level (I don't calibrate the scale on my Polar, but the relative readings should remain semi-accurate). The seven "major" summits were around 1400 feet, and there were over a dozen lesser ascents to contend with, all of these ranging from 10-25% grade. On dirt. You get the idea. My Polar graph uses time on the x-axis, so it doesn't portray the grades correctly the way distance would.



I could go on forever about this ride, but I'll leave that to others. Here is a link to a ride description from last year that I found, all of which I can agree with. This link is for some flickr pics from this year that someone already posted, capturing some of the scenery.