The End of the World as we know it

There was a lot to overcome this past week. With both GeWilli and Move it Fred away on vacation, the supply of blogger wisdom ran short of demand. At least those two will return soon, and we'll wonder why we ever missed them. Not so for the other dwindling August commodity, daylight.

August has always been a tough month for maintaining cycling form. Weekend races make it tough to pile in the miles, and with the later sunrises, and rapidly receding time of the sunsets, getting out during the week requires much more discipline. By contrast, in June and July I can work until 6 pm, drive home, read my mail, have a snack, and still ride nearly two hours and be home before dark. Not so now. I have to prepare in the morning, and hustle in the afternoon in order to get more than an hour ride. Next month will be even worse, but at least by then racing will have wound down. Well, sort of.

Oddly enough, more racing days are planned for September than in August. With the cancellation of Hilltowns, I had only Bow and Mt A. this month. September will bring four days at the GMSR, then the Haverhill Crit, and finally two days at the Bob Beal. In order to make the best of this, my plan is to take advantage of these race-free weekends in August to rack up the miles. Hopefully this will put some form in the bank and when September comes I can skate through those races without a lot of weekday training.

With the D2R2 century assuring ample saddle time for next week, I had the bright idea of doing a long ride this weekend to prepare for it. This year I haven't got out for more than four hours in a session even once. I sent out a post to my club list to try and recruit some mates for a six hour epic on Saturday, but I got no response. Pussies. I haven't had this much trouble getting people to ride with me since the last time my form was good...

Luckily, KL is a trooper and this week she was doing her own massive block of training to prepare for GMSR. Despite having gone out for a five-plus hour solo on Thursday, the Little Big Girl was eager to stay out on the bike all day Saturday. I couldn't really come up with any original ideas for a route, so we decided to follow the path of my longest ride from last year, basically combining my three hour "north loop" with my equal length "south loop." Saturday dawned with perfect weather, not too sunny, not too hot, a light breeze, and with little traffic. Apparently most residents of southeastern Mass were away on vacation or holed up in their homes getting ready to watch the Sox get their asses kicked by the dreaded Yankees.

We left the house just before 10 am, after having only the usual toast for breakfast. I packed two Clif bars and two Power Gels, along with a full flask of the same 4x sodium formula PG in my pockets, and two bottles of Gatorade on the frame. We rolled out north through Stoughton, Canton, and Westwood along a slightly extended version of my commute to work. From there we headed up the nice quiet winding road into toney Dover, hitching up with the loop from the Wednesday night "Hagen throwdown" ride. This took us across Sherborn, briefly into Holliston, and back down across 109 in Medway. Here I messed up a bit. My plan was to take us west across I-495 into Bellingham, but I wanted to avoid the traffic of the sprawl-mart complexes that have cropped up around every exit on the highway. The problem was, I don't get out that far too often, and I didn't know of any quiet over/underpass. Heading off the routes I did know, we explored some interesting side roads, but ended up crossing back and forth over 109 a few times before getting plopped right back onto 126, precisely what I had hoped to avoid. Oh well. KL went to the front and powered us through the mall and pub food mecca, and across the interstate.

Now we were going into uncharted territory. At three hours we stopped at the Hopedale Mini Mart where a delightful central-Asian clerk gave me some kind of deal on Gatorade and Nutrigrain bars, and I headed back out to the bikes with an armload of supplies for only $4. Topping up the bottles, KL chatted with some locals who were convinced she was a teenager and that I was her Dad. Must be the pigtails and pink powder-coated 650 wheels. They were astonished when she told them she planned on riding 100 miles today.

Continuing west on a nice road that headed toward the teeming metropolis of Mendon, we eventually turned back south on Providence Road, which by its name promised to head in approximately the right direction. This was a great stretch, no traffic, nice pavement, shade, perfect rural Mass roadway. We flew through Blackstone and the road kept going. I knew if we weren't careful we would end up in the mill town ghetto of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, which was one more spot I'd hoped to avoid. Well, the road we were on was just too good to turn off, and sure enough it led us straight into the big W. Not to fear, even with several traffic lights, a stretch of road construction, and some really interesting roadside characters, we quickly made it to the other side of town, and within a few miles we were back on the kind of roads we came out here to find.

Wrentham Road took us back into familiar territory around the northeast corner of RI, where it borders with Mass. This area is the normal turning point for my three hour "south loop." Picking up the pace a bit, we headed down the serpentine Tower Hill Road in the opposite direction of the usual, descending rather than climbing. This was a treat. After that, we crossed the reservoir causeway and went back to Sheldonville, where we made a second stop for supplies. At this point, we were 4:15 into it, and heading straight home would only take about an hour and a half, thus leaving us short of our goal. We therefore headed back northwest for a bit, climbing through the nearby apple orchard before looping back toward Wrentham. From there we started going pretty hard, enjoying a tailwind and keeping the pace around 35 kph. We flew down another cool roller-coaster road through Gilbert Hills State Forest in Foxboro, and made our way across Mansfield to do some long LT efforts on nice uninterrupted stretches of road in Norton. I did an eight minute pull on John B. Scott boulevard, then another six minutes up Route 140 past Wheaton College. After a short break, KL took over with a ten minute effort across Bay Road and down Howard Street, back into the hometown. I realize all this detail is pretty much useless to those of you from outside the area, but I needed to give GeWilli something to plod through when he gets back to the tower.

We had thought about stretching this to seven hours and 200k, but both of us were getting sore in the shoulders so we headed home and wound it up at 6:24 ride time for 186k (115 miles), an average of around 29 kph. Both of us finished up pretty fresh, and I have a bit more confidence in my endurance going into D2R2, although with three times the climbing of yesterday's ride, that will not be a walk in the park. Back to back weekend centuries should make the 80 mile stage at GMSR seem pretty short, and all these miles can't hurt. I try to do at least one long ride per year, and it feels good to have it behind me. Today it's raining, but I still feel like getting out there, and that's a good sign. Thanks for reading.