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Presenting my 2008 D2R2 ride report. Warning: The Deerfield Dirt Road Randonee holds the distinction of being the longest (elapsed time) event that Solobreak participates in. You know what that means. This could get lengthy. Sorry. Originally I'd planned to go for an entertaining post, but I just read Doug's report and began to think maybe I owe a more informative piece to the others who shared this adventure, as well as the many curious who've heard about this ride and might consider doing it one year. Now that Doug has scared you all off, I'm going to offer a contrasting opinion, bringing some balance to the situation.

D2R2 does not have to be a "death ride." Hell, any ride can be a death ride if you ride hard enough. Come up to the track Tuesday night and ride the kilo and you'll see what I mean. Anyhow, for D2R2 I made some special preparations. I did not ride for two days before the event. It would have been nice to do some stretching and massaging during that time, but this did not workout. Instead I spent my extra hours fussing with my bike (put 35 mm Paselas on the commuter, cleaned and lubed the chain, calibrated the computer, and unsuccessfully attempted to eliminate incessant creaking when pedaling), and most importantly, downloading some new music for the drive out. I've been using my old car for much of the summer, but for the 3 am drive to Deerfield, I'd take the XBox and its IPod connector. Yes, 3 am, we'll get back to that later. I'd meant to download some Arlo for this trip (see my 2006 D2R2 post title if you don't understand why), but forgot to. Instead I got Isaac Hayes Theme from Shaft, Black Flag doing Louie, Louie, and Blondie Picture This LIVE to replace a CD I used to own. Along with preparing food and getting packed, all this had me in bed by 10:30 pm, but not sleeping until about an hour later. The alarm went off at 2:30, so figure 3.5 hours of sleep at best. Not a big problem, but I did not get a chance to execute my normal "morning routine" before leaving. More on this later too...

We're two long paragraphs into this and we haven't even left the house yet! Woo-hoo! At the Ludlow rest stop, nothing was even open, so no egg sandwich for you. No morning routine there either. By 5:30 I was off 91 and looking for the road to the event when I saw a Volvo with bike on the roof making a U-turn, so I followed him down the dark farm road. I was getting a bit concerned when I finally saw waving flashlights and tents up ahead. "Bang a Gong" was blaring on my speakers as I pulled in, and would play in my head for the next several hours, which was nice, as dirty, sweet seemed like an appropriate theme for the day. I parked next to John L from IBC and got checked in. I was getting dressed when they called the start and we watched Doug and company roll off. I was not all that bummed, as my plan was to start very easy. On a ride this long, if you're feeling chipper after four hours, there are still plenty of miles left to start hammering. Doing it the other way around is how you create a "death ride" situation.

John was ready the same time as me and we rolled out in the dawn's early light at 6:11. He fiddled with his GPS and we took it easy. The first half of this ride contains most of the climbing. There was too much fog to get nice views most of the time. I also missed the oddball collection of bikes and saw very little livestock for some reason this year. We did come up upon one dude who was riding an old Miyata. Looking down we saw he had chainrings and a chain on both sides of the bike! The poor guy was trying to eat on a climb, but John queried him about the setup anyway. It was a modified Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub, installed backwards. The left side chain drove a fixed gear, and he could shift it to choose between two ratios. The right side chain drove a single speed freewheel, with a lower ratio than the two fixed choices. You only see this sort of stuff at D2R2... Most of the randonneurs ride very servicable bikes -- Surleys, Bianchis, Konas of steel, with fenders, cantis and triples. And they spin them on the climbs. I guess that's how you save your legs when riding the 400k distances these riders sometimes do.

The route was marked this year. The stops were also stocked amazingly well, with Gatorade and enough food for three times the number of riders they had. For $60 this ride is by far the best value of any organized event in New England. They even had food at the start. You could have shown up with no money, no food, and empty pockets and been absolutely fine. There were also pristine new PortaJohns, stocked with Baby Wipes no less! But I still was not "ready" to take advantage. More on this later...

The descent of East Road was pretty rocky. Some people were riding it crazy. I also saw a ton of people on ordinary road tires. My giant Paselas measure a full 38 mm in both dimensions. I had them overinflated to 85 psi, so I wasn't worried about pinch flatting, and was a bit ahead of John on his 700x28s. 3/4 of the way down I saw an IBC guy changing a flat. This must have been one of the guys John thought we'd catch. At the bottom of East Road, I waited and ate a cheese sandwich. Five minutes and about two dozen riders passed, still no John. Then Matt R and some Rapha dudes came by. They had started fifteen minutes after us and were hammering. F it, I jumped on with them. The next stop was not far away, just up one big climb. The Rapha guys had a photog car following them with one of the Cambridge Bike guys from the track. They took pictures on the climb, but one of the guys had a bike issue. At the stop Matt did several repairs, and I had several PB&J's. Still no John. After twenty minutes they left as a group and I jumped on. We hammered almost like a race.

There is one section of double track Jeep road. It's like an MTB course at that point. These guys were jamming it. There was exactly one big mud puddle, large enough for water buffalo wallowing. It had a slim line around it on the left, and a wider off camber line on the right. I headed high on the off camber, which turned out to be ice-like mud, and my balloon tire slid out in an instant and down I went. Only partially into the mud puddle... I chased back on, but was pretty gassed when we hit the 27% gravel slopes of Achambo Road. I'd cleaned it in 2006, but only the first rider in our group made it this year. I started at the back and Matt and I hooked as he struggled and I tried to sneak by. I ran up and remounted. We motored for a bit more, then suffered on the Hillman Road grind into the sun. The paved descent to 112 was rockin. Then came the long climb to the state line. We caught dozens and dozens of riders on this section. It got almost like a pack as we began the LOOOOOOONG descent towards Green River. One of the Rapha guys flatted. There was waiting, but knowing the next rest stop was less than ten miles away, I continued with the intent of building a time cushion to hopefully make use of the Porta John.

Down near the bottom, a 6 foot 8 guy on a new Vanilla flies by me with a friend. It's Josh. He is an incredible descender. I can't be shown up, so I let out the stops and chase onto him. No sooner do we shake hands then psssssst my front tire goes down. They're gone. I have one tube, and it's a 23 mm. Dumbass. I have patches though... I change the tube and get rolling as Matt and the Raphas come along. A mile later pssssst. Shit. One of the Rapha guys offers a tube. I ask him how many does he have? He says two. I take one. I heard that later he double flatted... Bummer, made me feel like an ass for not bringing two of my own.

I change the tube. This one had a failure near the valve hole. I noticed the rim was still pretty hot. Hmmmmm. It's only about a mile to the stop. They had a floor pump, so I checked the other tube in the river and it's leaking near the valve as well, can't be patched. Double hmmmmm. They gave me another tube at the rest stop. So nice, so deluxe. Great food. Someone says "Dave!" It's Sam Robinson from Maine. I have not seen him in over ten years. Matt and the Raphas, as well as Josh are long gone, and Sam and I catch up on things. He tells me him, Jane, and the kids have been living on their sailboat in the Caribbean for two years, and suddenly my life seems rather ordinary. He's doing the 100k so we can't ride together, but I tell him about the blog. He's already a Nega-Coach fan...

By now John and his mates Kevin and Mike are here and we agree to ride together. I am still not ready for a potty stop... At least I know enough not to eat too much here as it's all uphill for several miles when you depart. With my two flats and the other overly long stops, I have 6:10 on the odo as we roll out, and just over fifty miles to go! My Blackburn Delphi had totally wigged out since the mud bog incident anyway, but John had GPS data. Our gang of four rode steady but at a manageable pace. Parts of the route I remembered vividly from 2006, other parts not at all. Most of them were dirt and uphill. That's D2R2. On Green River road my passport fell out of my pocket and I had to chase most of the way up the subsequent hills after retrieving it. Then we bombed back down to Rt 112 at 50 mph. The course markers were a bit messed up there and I ended up braking heavily before making the turn. Pssssssst. WTF? It seems I must have been heating up the rims and the heat was causing my tubes to fail at the valve hole, despite having thick Velox rim tape. The undersized tube situation probably was not helping. This time I just used a 12g CO2, which gave about 35 psi. Turned out to not be enough, as I did not trust it to stand on the Patten Hill climb. I had to sit the entire way, not a huge deal, as the surface is loose anyway. And so was I... Suddenly I really, really needed to get to the portajohn. It was 2:30 pm and I'd eaten an awful lot today...

Mercifully, the stop was at the top of the climb this year, not up and over. The theme song of the day was about to change from Bang a Gong to Robert Plant's Big Log. My apologies to the next poor person to use this thing, the rest stop attendees nearby, the PortaJohn pumping guy, and the PortaJohn pumping guys family and friends. But I'm feeling much better now. OK then. They had a floor pump too, so I got the tire up to about 60 psi and prayed the patch grommet I'd fashioned for the valve stem this time would get me back home without further incident. We bombed the next descent, but not recklessly like Doug's group apparently did. I saw some other incidents with oncoming cars both this time and last. Riders on this ride seem to forget that this is not a race and the roads are open to traffic. Narrow roads. And as JD reminded me in 2006, the locals do not move to middle of noplace, ten miles from the nearest paved road because they enjoy the company of others. Having 300 cyclists suddenly appear in your personal piece of peace rubs some of them the wrong way, and I've learned to stay on my side of the road and live with that.

On the final section of gnarly double track I took advantage of my big tires and fresh feeling and dropped the group. I wanted to at least beat my 2006 ET of 10:15. Back on the pavement I felt fantastic, and easily could have ridden another thirty miles. I TT'd back to the festival and rolled in with an unofficial 9:59:30. My official time will be 10:10 as they punched my start as 6:00 am. I calculate from my Polar just over an hour of stops for food and flats, so roughly 8:55 ride time. I met up with the others and swapped stories, then took the shuttle to Deerfied Academy for a shower. There was still tons of food and drink at the finish, plus we got a meal ticket and free local beer too. My meal was fresh cooked Doug... Perks of being slow I guess.

So lessons? Doing lots of long rides this year was key. I was ready for this. If I'd stayed with grouppo Rapha and not got any flats it would have been pretty hard. I still think it's best to wait until after Hillman before pushing the pace on this ride, maybe later. I would not do this on small road tires. The Paselas were a good choice again. I bought some 28s, expecting them to be 20% smaller than the 35s, but they were about half the size, and I did not trust them, so I stayed with the big ones. The 28s might have been OK. I wanted the big air volume for flat insurance, but that kind of backfired. Next time I'll have a pump for sure, and at least two tubes of the proper size. Running the tires at recommended pressure would be recommended too... And last but certainly not least, I think I'll find a way to get out there Friday afternoon next time, and start the ride in "normal" condition rather than underslept and under, ummm, bathroomed. Thanks for reading. Was this informative and entertaining?