Jaffrey

Since the first bike race I ever witnessed was television coverage of the team pursuit from Mexico City in 1968, we'll go with a semi-Olympic theme today. The fuzzy black and white TV images of quartets of riders circling the velodrome in perfect unison, with the lead rider shooting up to the top of the high concrete banking before dropping just as quickly back down to the rear of the line, made quite an impression on my seven year old mind. Track racing was out of the question for a kid like me then, and to this day I still haven't ridden on a "real" velodrome, but I'm going to make that happen soon. But this post is not about track.

When I eventually started racing eighteen years later (long detour eh), joining the Boston Road Club in 1986, John Allis was the main club coach, often doling out advice to the Wells Ave beginners from the saddle of his wooden-rimmed fixed gear. John had ridden on the Mexico City road team, as well as the 1972 team in Munich, and was revered by everyone at the Wells Ave scene. Retired from racing by then, save for an occasional masters race, he still led a lot of rides for various groups of riders and was "the honcho" around here. One of the rides John used to lead often out of his bike shop was "the Jaffrey Turnaround," a 185k epic from Belmont MA to the NH mountain town and back. The route was rural and the hilliness increased as you approached Jaffrey. If you hadn't ever done this ride, you were pretty much a nobody.

One day Ted Richards, who was a top Cat 2 from the BRC who also coached the beginners at Wells, invited me to do this with him as training. I'd been racing for a year or two then and had got to know the better riders in the club. However, most of my "long rides" back then were on the flat roads near my home in southeast Mass, and usually ended right at 100 miles, because, well, that was enough. This would be the longest ride of my life, with the best rider I'd ever trained with. I took a day off from work and met Ted at his mom's home in Newton (he was a bike bum at the time).

Heading out through Weston, Ted sat on my wheel and told me I was going too hard. My Avocet probably read 19 mph, and this was "normal" pace for me. But I slowed down, a little, but maybe not enough. By the time we crossed the border and the long grades started, I was hanging on Ted's wheel, probably getting gapped at the top. We had lunch in Jaffrey. I remember Ted eating an Italian sub. I couldn't believe it. I ate a sleeve of Fig Newtons. Heading south out of Jaffrey, I did not feel so good. I don't remember all the details, but somehow I must have survived. What I do remember was crossing the 100 mile mark somwhere in Acton or something, and Ted saying "now we're going to pick it up." I was aching all over, my feet burning in my wooden-soled Duegi 101s. I fiddled with my straps as Ted proceeded to drill it at 24-28 mph down whatever road we were on. He was a very strong rider, often taking money against the best domestic pros of the day in the prestigious Wheat Thins pro criterium series. I was getting schooled. Now I knew why I'd been warned about going out too hard. I wasn't pulling now. Fifteen miles of torture later, Ted sat up. "Now we cool down the rest of the way." Back at his house, I had 122 miles, I don't recall the time, but this would stand as my longest ride ever for a long while into the future.

Yesterday, I returned to Jaffrey for the first time in twenty years. Wednesday night I'd headed up to the track for another attempt at the kilo. It was C & D championships night so I got to watch Miche duel it out with the other women in the sprints too, but Tony let me ride the timed event even though I'd already ridden it in the A's last week. Not sure of my exact time, but my first lap was again slow. A bit smoother, I held it better and went sub 1:21 at the end; don't know by how much, but at least I got a second faster. I wanted sub 1:20 though, and did not make it.

The Cronoman and I had a conference Thursday morning to decide on our route. I told him I wanted to do six hours. He is more of a "your long rides only need to be as long as your longest race" guy, lobbying for a four hour cutoff, but I was having none of it. Of course he caved from my tauntings, and we got out the map. We settled on at trip toward Jaffrey. Now Nashua is a lot closer starting point than Newton, so we'd need to improvise in order to get the distance up. Our loop started through Pepperell and Townsend, and we picked up the turnaround route around Greenville. Through New Ipswich the roads are quite hilly, and my Polar showed us at least 300m higher than when we started. Rolling into Jaffrey just 2:10 into it, we had only a 25kph average going. Hmmm. This time we just got water, and kept on heading west, past the foot of Mt Monadnock. Out here, neither of us knew the roads. Three hours out, we decided to take a road south. Good choice. This brought us into the metropolis of Troy, NH, where we picked up 202 south to 119, which we knew from the map headed back parallel to the way we came out. 119 is a state highway with low traffic, wide shoulder, and long, steady grades up and down. Hammer time. Grinding uphill for five minutes at a time and then flying down into the next hollow. Lather, rinse, repeat for about an hour.

At the four hour food stop in Ashby, a woman wished us well and said she hoped we'd beat the rain... It started pouring as soon as we rolled out. I steered us back north on 31 because I knew if we went straight back we'd come in under six. I wanted more climbing. At 4:20 the Cronoman started cramping. That's what happens when you normally only ride four hours. Luckily Eric is a tough guy and he would endure just about anything in order to avoid a lifetime of me reminding him how he cracked on our ride. So I gave him twenty seconds to pull himself together and then popped it back in the big ring. We also had a three mile serpentine descent in the pouring rain to help him recover before we hit the backside of Mason Road, climbing again for a few miles as the sun reappeared. I'd have loved to find more hills at that point, but being a warm, benevolent, nurturing soul I had to show some mercy. We rode straight back toward home on the flatter roads in Brookline, and he even started taking turns on the front again, making sure we did not take the left for last chance hills in West Hollis. I was bummed, but figured hell, at least this way we can get our average speed up, so ala Ted from 1988, I took us up to 40 kph and left it there all the way across Pepperell and down 111 back to Nashua. At 5:45 I gave the wave, announcing the cooldown.

Final stats 176k, 6:00, 29.4 kph avg, 1755m (5700 feet) of climbing. Not quite matching my ride with Ted two decades prior, but pretty close. And only my fourth longest ride of the season. The Cronoman recovered well after washing his bike... On to D2R2. And I don't have cable, so I probably won't get to catch the team pursuits from the Olympics. Thanks for reading.