The Road to PBP (and other stuff)

Ssssssst! What was that? Probably nothing, I’ll go back to sleep. Sssssssst! Okay, I definitely heard something. I stumbled out of bed to find Peko and David inflating his bicycle tires in the living room. It was a little after 1am, and Peko had just picked up David from the airport. In three more hours, Dave and I would be riding the BBS 400k. Luckily, I had five hours of sleep in the tank. But Peko and David hadn’t. We finished assembling the bike, and laid down for a 45 minute nap. Then it was time to go. Peko made us bagel sandwiches and we munched bananas as we drove out to Hanscom Airfield for the start. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, and I tested out my new Roubaix bike, lights, GPS, and Carradice bag. While I had shaken most things out in the previous weeks, this would be their inaugural brevet.

A few minutes before 4am, Tracy gave out some last minute advice. Watch out for dogs. Oh, and this is a lovely, flat course. I was very glad to hear that, because going off to New Hampshire didn’t sound terribly flat to me, and David’s knee has a difficult time with the steep sections. Then it was time to go — which for most people meant “start riding”. Dave and I took this as an opportunity to pose for a final picture. Then we were off.

The leaders were setting a brisk pace, and we were pretty far back. I hoped to catch the main group to do some early drafting, but it was important for Dave’s knee that we start slowly to let it warm up. So we remained back a while, watching the tail lights of the peleton off in the distance. I let Dave take the lead to set a comfortable pace. I guess he felt that riding fast was comfortable, because after a couple miles we caught up. But in short order we hit some hills, and then a red light, and the group split for good. We stayed with the slower group for another hour or so, until some folks began dropping back, and since there was no need to rush things, we joined them. We ended up riding with a guy and a gal (Emily) all the way to the first control. Emily was on a fixed-gear that made a squeaking sound when she was going uphill. Turns out she had about 17,000 miles on this bike, and the bottom bracket had about had it. She just hoped that she could make it to the 3rd control, which is at Peter White’s cycle shop. We hit a long uphill stretch, and the consensus seemed to be that this would be the only tough climb on the ride. Personally, I was still a bit leery about how flat this ride could be.

I was navigating with GPS instead of the cue sheet. So far, it had tried to pull me the wrong way once. But otherwise, the programmed route was working well. And it sure was convenient to let the GPS do all the thinking while I took in the scenery. A few tenths of a mile before each turn it gave a little “beep-beep” to let me know that a route correction was coming up. Things were looking good.

The first stop occurred well before the 1/4 way point, so it caught me by surprise. We pulled in at 8am, and quickly found the bathrooms and food. Dave continued his culinary maverick streak by building a peanut butter, banana, and poptart sandwich. As I munched away on decidedly more mundane food, I set the GPS for the next route. Uh-oh. The little bugger could only route with 50 waypoints. To keep the tracks accurate, I had put in about 100 waypoints for each section. Time to do some field deletions. As I randomly removed points, I vaguely hoped that this wouldn’t lead us too far astray….

We pulled out of the first stop ahead of Emily. No sense sitting when we could be riding our bikes. We followed a river for a stretch, which was relatively flat. Then we hit more hills, one that went by a dam. Sometime around this point Dave’s knee went from “throb” to “revolt”. He was having a hard time putting any weight on his right pedal, and had to do all the climbing with his left leg. Not a good situation. Shortly after this, we were swept up by a group including Emily. We had a hard time pacing them, though. A few miles later, Dave discovered that his seat was about an inch too low! This couldn’t have been good for his knee.

After a brutal climb up Carter Hill, we were forced to stop. Forty miles to the next control point, and Dave’s knee had about had it. We sat in the sunshine, and I ate a Marathon bar while Dave thrashed his calf with a stick to “stimulate endorphins”. I didn’t know if hitting his leg with a stick would release endorphins or not, but I offered to whack him a few times anyway. Things didn’t look good for making it to the next control point. But when a tandem bike passed us, I think Dave couldn’t stand any more sitting. We got back on the bikes, and back underway. Still more hills ahead of us; on a long one we passed the tandem bike and rode by Shaker Village. Dave was in the lead so that he could set the pace. He had taken some Advil at our calf thrashing stop, and it seemed to help. I rode behind, randomly deleting more GPS waypoints from the upcoming segments. Dave was riding strongly now, and it seemed clear that we would make the second checkpoint in Meredith, NH. We crossed a funky, minimalist steel bridge over a raging river. Then more hills. Hadn’t someone said this would be a flat ride? Hills on Rt. 106, and then a steep section up Pease Road. That was it for David’s knee. He gamely pushed on, though, into Meredith, then past Meredith, up another (relatively short) hill to the second control.

We were a pretty sorry bunch. We were near the back of the pack, Dave’s knee felt like it was going to come unhinged whenever he applied pressure to it, and I had lost my brevet card. Doh! I shouldn’t have kept it in my jersey pocket. Bruce was manning the control, and noted my arrival time, but didn’t sound optimistic about my chances of getting credit. “Just enjoy the rest of the ride” he recommended.

After spending an hour at the control (according to the clock — it felt more like 15 minutes to me), people were still trickling in. Apparently we hadn’t been the last riders after all. None had found my brevet card, unfortunately. And it was clear that Dave’s knee was done. He couldn’t put any weight on his leg. So I put a call in to Crew Chief Peko. She was out mountain biking in the Medford Fells, but quickly offered to drive up to Meredith to rescue us. After considering a few seconds, I decided to push on rather than abandon. Dave had already ridden through far more pain than I was likely to encounter on the rest of the ride, and so what if I didn’t get credit? I’d still have ridden 400K. So I said farewell to Dave, and left for Peter White’s shop with a two hour cushion over the second control’s closing time.

After exiting Meredith, I began regretting my decision to keep going. The route here was relatively flat, but it headed due west into the teeth of a stiff wind that fully extended every flag that I rode by. After ten miles of this nonsense, the route finally swung south, and even tipped downhill a bit. This was more like it!! I hammered along, enjoying the beautiful day. This eight mile stretch was the best part of the whole ride. Then the route veered west again, onto Rt. 127. Hello wind. And hello hills. One big roller after another. After another. Up until this point, I had tackled everything in the big chainring. But the constant up and down finally forced me to shift down into the 34 toother. Oh, that felt better. I churned along and finally arrived at the third control around 6:15pm.

The black flies were ferocious here, but Peter had an enclosed deck where we could hang out and recuperate. I called Peko and Dave; they were on the road out of New Hampshire, and had stopped for ice cream along the way. Suddenly the chips and somewhat stale donuts that I was eating didn’t taste as good as I had originally thought…. After half an hour I climbed back on the bike. There was an hour until sundown, and I wanted to get as many miles behind me as I could.

Things hummed along pretty well at the beginning. I was racing the sun, and the route was relatively flat until a long, 3 mile climb up to Crotched Mountain ski area. In another 10 miles everything got pretty dark, so I switched on the lights. Five miles later, I was screaming down a steep descent when the GPS blinked to tell me I had missed a turn. What a place for a turn! Luckily, I only had to backtrack uphill a quarter mile or so. Slogging uphill, I fell in with a couple other guys who had missed the turn as well.

This was a great piece of luck. Phil and Rich are two of the nicest guys on the planet. Rich runs a CRW paceline fitness ride that I attended a few weeks back, so we already knew each other. He’s a very strong rider, and did a lot of pulling as the night closed in. Phil just picked up biking last fall, but was already in incredible form and knew the route well. Three sets of lights definitely helped illuminate the road, but even so our pace slackened as the dark really took hold.

As the evening gave way to night, tiredness began to set in. Rolling through the dark, with nothing to see but a wheel in front of me, I began to get drowsy. But the pulls at the front woke me up; particularly a steep, twisty downhill section. It was also getting colder. I had a vest and armwarmers on by this point, and would have liked a little more, but was too tired to dig in my bag to pull out another jacket or leg warmers. I suppose the chill helped keep me alert, as did the constant chatter with Phil and Rich. And about ten miles from the finish, we pulled into a Dunken Donuts for a quick warm-up. Rich treated us to hot drinks, which really hit the spot. Then we pressed on and finished the ride eleven minutes after midnight. I was very thankful to finally be done. If you think this write-up is long, it’s nothing compared to how the ride itself felt.

Tracy initially gave me a hard time about losing my Brevet card, but she was only kidding. Apparently it is standard operating procedure for Bruce and her to “make you sweat” a little when you lose your card, but in the end they give you credit anyway. I was pretty pleased with that. Since Phil was from Cambridge, he offered to drive me home so that Peko wouldn’t have to come get me. He dropped me off around 1am. David was sleeping soundly by that time, so I quietly ate some leftovers that Peko heated up for me, and then crawled into bed. It had been a long but satisfying day.