I entered for the Peterborough 100 (100 miles, 168km) which is run by Action Medical Research.  Not entirely sure what they do but I’m sure it’s a good cause.  For me it was all about training for the upcoming Liege Paris trip which is about a month away now.

John Lane picked me up at 5.45am (ugh) and we drove up to the start.  Met Andy McGuinness there and basically set off right away.  It was incredibly cold in the morning and since it was forecast to be warmer later, there was a bit of compromise about the clothing which turned out to be a mistake first thing.  At one point I was cycling with my hands down my shorts just to try to heat them up.

Predictably enough, John and Andy dropped me after about 30km so I was on my own for most of the trip.  I always find the 2nd quarter of cycle routes particularly difficult and this one was no different.  It had got a bit hotter but it had got a lot more hilly.  The countryside is beautiful near Peterborough.  Rolling farmland and quaint little villages built from the local Midland stone.  The villages were nice but the “rolling” made for a lot of pain since you’d think that you’d got to the top of a hill only to see another downhill stretch followed by yet another uphill stretch.  Really horrible.  However, it is classic “English Countryside” filled with little villages called stupid things like Batterston cum Trouserwyke and Little Snogton etc.  Also, it was quite noticeable that there were no jet contrails in the sky.  Thank you Eyjafjallojoekull.

There were a lot of feeding stations on the way which enabled me to keep my caffeine intake  up and my intake of crap sandwiches.  I was too knackered to do much except take a picture of my crap sandwich.  Despite the sandwiches being a bit crap, the whole event was very well organised indeed. 

The rest of the ride was a bit better.  These events are full of men and women in ill advised lycra which leaves little to the imagination and is probably the least flattering clothing in the world.  The rather depressing thing is one gets passed by tubby men and women and some men with beer bellies large enough to look like they’re in the terminal stage of some a strange fertility experiment where they’re attempting to give birth to octuplets.  More hill climb practicing for me I think. 

So the last section was a lot better since I got on the wheel of a few groups which were doing 30km/h+ and as long as I drafted them I could keep up.  It’s a nice feeling cycling in a larger group especially when other people are doing the work at the front.

Rolled into finish line after just under 7 hours on the bike.  168km at an average of 24.3km/h.  1339m of climbing and 5607 calories expended (although the Garmin is notoriously generous on its calorie estimate.  Probably could have done another 30k or 40k but not another 140k like Chris does when he does his 300km rides.  Map of the route and the stats.

The first day Liege Paris is about the same distance but 2000m+ climbing.  Oh dear.

This ride was very easy after yesterday.  Beautiful sunny day, quiet roads, just gently spinning along.  There’s definitely something mad with the Garmin estimate of calories used though.  According to the Garmin, this ride was 1000 calories!  That’s completely bonkers.  I’d be surprised if it was a third of that.

Did this ride this morning on the wet horrible roads round Cambridge.  Stats not so good and was suffering from a hangover which never helps.  Only two months until the Liege Paris trip so there’s going to have to be more and more of these unfortunately…

After coming back from the USA, I needed some exercise.  This is my standard 30k loop and I’d like to be able to do it in under an hour.  Once managed 1 hr 4 minutes but this time 1 hour and 15 minutes. 

Garmin Connect – Activity Details for John Lane’s short loop

Just did this shortish ride this morning with some of the guys who are doing the Liege Paris ride this year.  It was so cold this morning.  My feet feel like two blocks of ice and despite hot hands I really suffered with my thin gloves.  Also, not very fast due to having a cold and my ribs hurting on the way up hills.  Whinge whinge whinge…anyway might try and get out on Sunday to do some more before heading to Chicago. 

Coyote Flaco was pretty good.  Well, to be more precise, the food and drink was good at Coyote Flaco.  There was some disappointment expressed about the size of the Nacho Grande starter since it didn’t seem terribly “grande” to four very hungry guys but the margaritas were huge and the wine was acceptable.  The main problem with Coyote Flaco was the resident annoying guitarist who spent most of the evening cruising the tables playing faux classical guitar pieces or singing Spanish and Mexican classics at the top of his voice.  We tried very hard to avoid catching his eye at any point during the evening.  Boy was it annoying although he did have the last laugh.  When JJ and I retired to the car park for a cigarette, Lee attempted to pay the guitarist to come out to the car park and serenade us.  A good practical joke you might think.  However, Lee gave him $20 and then asked him to go out into the car park.  The guy made the $20 disappear into his pocket and said “nope” and then zoomed off into the kitchen never to be seen again.  No doubt $20 was more money than he’d made in a week.  Oh how we laughed at Lee’s expense but since Lee had “borrowed” the $20 from Terry maybe we should have been laughing at Terry.

On the way back there was some talk of going to a bar for beers but JJ and I declined.  Lee and Terry stayed out to watch the Yankees win at baseball and to drink a lot of beer.  They had world class hangovers in the morning which should mean that I’ve got a better chance of keeping up.

So the following morning dawned wet and cold.  We went to a local diner and had the traditional “eggs any style with bacon and sausage” breakfast.  Now take note here because the breakfast is going to make another appearance later in this story…

We all got on our bikes with the traditional groans and moans from everybody as their painful butts hit the saddle.  It turns out that the Howard Johnson’s in Williamstown is 200 metres from the start of the Mount Graylock climb.  So no warm up, just straight into the climb.  The first section was absolutely horrible.  12% grades and vicious switchbacks.  I got dropped off the back pretty early and just concentrated on trying to keep the pedals turning.  I had the lowest possible gear on the bike and still I couldn’t get the bike up the really steep sections. 

I had to stop four times.  Once for a pee because I thought that I could unload some weight and it would be a bit easier.  The second time was on a very very steep section where I just couldn’t keep the pedals turning.  The third time was when I hit my red line on the heart rate monitor.  My heart was at 175 on a steep section out of the saddle and I had to stop.  It was then when the aforementioned “eggs any style with bacon and sausage” made their unwelcome second appearance of the day.  As I was leaning over the Armco barrier losing my breakfast a big posse of hairy Harley Davidson riders went past.  Those people have very fat arses.  I shouted “you should try the biking induced bulimia barf to lose some weight you big fat bastards” after them but I shouted it quite quietly since they were kind of scary and there were a lot more of them than me.

The fourth stop involved the rear wheel slipping on the leaves.  The entire road up was covered with slippery wet leaves and if you’re pushing down on the pedals when you’re on a leaf the rear wheel slips alarmingly.  Unfortunately when this happened, I fell forward and…err…there’s no easy way of saying this…caught my testicles on the stem of the handlebars.  Had I not lost my breakfast earlier, this would have been the moment that I would have lost them.  I didn’t quite lose consciousness but it was very sore indeed.  The following 20 minutes were like cycling with a couple of red hot coals in my trousers.  If any of you reading this have cycled with red hot coals in your trousers, you’ll know what that feels like.  Actually, if any of you have cycled with red hot coals in your pants, you’re reading the wrong blog.  You want www.i-like-red-hot-coals-in-my-pants.com.  Oh and get some professional help too.

Eventually the grade relented a bit and I could at least make forward progress.  The early part of the climb was tremendously brutal but the final part was only ugly and nasty.  Long 6% grades with rain and fog.  I stopped to take some pictures but they didn’t turn out that well because I was shaking a lot.

Finally, after a lot of pain I reached the top of Mount Graylock.  The highest mountain in Massachusetts.  As I cycled in to the car park at the top I shouted “oh yes oh yes I’ve fucking done it thank you sweet Jebus”.  I think the children in the car park might have been slightly offended.  JJ and Lee and Terry had arrived a bit before me and were in the lodge eating really really bad food but it sort of didn’t matter.  It was done.  We sat around in the lodge in front of the fire and tried to recover.  A huge fat guy in a red sweatshirt came up to me and said “did you ride one of ‘em bike things all the way up here”?  I said yes and he said “I just wanna shake your hand”.  How nice.  I was actually quite touched.  Maybe I was delirious.

Mount Graylock is famous for its panoramic views but the fog made the panoramic views a bit rubbish really.  There is a war memorial on the top of the hill which is pretty impressive but it just looked like a lighthouse in the fog.  One has to say that for a war memorial, this is unusually phallic in construction.

The stats for Graylock were 16km at an average of 11km/h.  Average heart rate at 144 with a max of 175 (I think this was the vomit point).  3000 ft of climbing.  These aren’t great stats but given how tough it was it’s not too bad.  Obviously Lee, Terry and JJ did better than me on this so their stats should be better.

Terry (in his usual duplicitous way) had told us that the descent was “downhill all the way” neglecting to mention the uphill bits.  Hmmm.  The decent was cold and long.  It could have been great but cycling on tyres less than an inch wide down wet roads covered with very slippery leaves isn’t much fun.   We got colder and colder on the way down and had to stop at the slightly sad Visitor Centre at the bottom of the south side just to heat up.  There were lots of worthy exhibits about how to make an axe handle and how fabulous the conservation work is in Graylock but to be honest it was all a bit tired.

After that, for some weird reason I got a really good second wind.  I was feeling bloody great.  It was quite a short route after Graylock and we absolutely flew along.  Nice rolling countryside with very short steep sections that you could attack and get to the top before you blew up.  Good tarmac.  Just perfect.  Terry and I blew along Route 7 at super high speed and got to West Stockbridge in good time.  The rain stopped, the sun came out, and I think the wind might have been behind us. 

We’re staying at the Williamsville Inn just outside West Stockbridge MA.  This is a fantastic old inn run by a German couple named Eberhart and Candy.  Candy?  That’s a German name?  Eberhart is a “certified master chef” and so we’ve decided to eat here rather than go into Great Barrington for pizza.  It could be interesting I guess.  The menu looks great.  We are trying to avoid mentioning the war although a few times an involuntary “ya” has slipped into the conversation.  We’ve all been sitting in the lounge of the Inn being entertained by Candy’s stories of the novel she’s writing and drinking organic beer.  And wine.

So, for me this was a good day.  Obviously one might think that losing one’s breakfast on a brutal hill climb, smacking one’s nuts on the stem of your bike and being cold, tired and worn out would take the shine off the day but in fact it was just great.  My best day so far.  Terry is holding up best of all and Lee’s early bottom problems seem to have subsided.  Rather disturbingly the right side of JJ’s body has gone numb from the waist down and I’m getting knee twinges on the steep stuff.  I guess you just have to expect this stuff at our ages.

The stats for the whole day are about 4200 ft of climbing.  73km at an average speed of 20.3 km/h.  That’s a crap average but given the that the first half of the day was averaging 11km/h I’m not too unhappy about it.

Usual photo album below.

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