 148 mi | 16.1 mph avg | 44 mph max click here for slide show |
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I have a gift. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The seeds for my 2011 B2B campaign were planted several years ago when I first heard of the ride. The first fertiziler was spread by my Marc, who rode it last year and gave it a hearty endorsement. I would be remiss if I did not point out that when evaluating a recommendation such as this, one would be wise to take into account Marc's aviary bone structure coupled with his lean mountain goat musculature. I, on the other hand, climb like a sprinter, a fact perhaps best captured by my Jim-bestowed nickname, "freight train." 
The skepticism accompanying Marc's enthusiasm melted away in December when I met Michelle
(playing the part of the nurturing gardener in this increasingly forced
analogy) at a holiday gathering--she too raved about the B2B.
So, I put my name in the hat when the registration window opened in February and found myself pleased to be rewarded with a spot in the ride.
Fearing that in Michelle I'd simply happened upon another rider whose talents exceeded my own, I was comforted to find on the OTHCABB
(Over The Hill Cambridge Arlington Belmont Bicyclists) Boston Marathon ride (Hopkinton Marathon start area pictured, click this or any image to enlarge)
that she and I were nicely matched.
Fast forward to the weekend before the June 18 ride. My plan was to ride 50 miles Saturday on the North Shore with Michelle, Betsy, Greg, and Bert, then tackle the Seven Hills Wheelmen's King's Tour of the Quabbin Sunday with Marc, Jim, and others from the Wellesley Peet's group. Saturday's heavy, cold rain (it was a struggle to find the dexterity to remove my shoes) and the prediction of same for Sunday resulted in my bailing on the KTOTQ (2 hours on the trainer that evening as penance)--kudos to the Peet's group for tackling it regardless of the weather (which ended up not being so bad) ... and the 7,000 feet of climbing (which did). 
A full work schedule during the week left me with no recourse but to fit in some miles on my trainer--45 minutes Tuesday night.
I capped my prep Friday by commuting with the Bike Boston convoy 13.2 miles roundtrip from Jamaica Plain to Boston City Hall Plaza
(free breakfast burritos from Boloco!) on my 20" wheel, 6-speed
fBike folding bike (16" single speed version pictured).
I picked up my jersey and ride packet late Friday afternoon and took the opportunity to get the lay of the Harpoon Boston land.
Saturday morning would be early enough (3:55am wake-up call) without needing to build in time to allow for getting lost.
Saturday morning, alarm rings, brush teeth, pack my cooler, bags in the minivan (bike already in the night before), hop on the Mass Pike,
get off at exit 25, arrive Harpoon Brewery 4:30am, park in area 1, unload and prep bike, leave clean clothes bag, drive to parking garage (area 2),
realize that cash is back with my bike, drive back to area 1, get cash, drive back to parking garage, park, start walking back
to area 1 to get bike, realize I forgot to put on sunscreen (an odd notion at 4:45am when it's still more dark than light), return to minivan,
apply sunscreen, walk to area 1 to get bike and bag, take bag to area 3 for loading on the truck, final prep in area 4 (note to self: probably best to leave
alone the partially used tube of chamois butter that someone left in the porta-potty), queue up in area 5 (5:05am),
enter start corral 1 with roughly 24 fellow riders (5:20am), 10 minutes to go, move to start corral 2, short talk by the Harpoon folks,
5:30am on the dot and we're off (yeah, it felt as fast as all of that once my alarm rang).
As far as I was aware, I wasn't starting with anyone I knew. The Peet's group had opted for the 17 mph group that started at 6:00am. The OTHCABB group was divided, some starting early in Boston and others picking up the ride as it came through Arlington Center. 
The route (cue sheet, map pictured at left in 3 sections)
started with a ride through Boston and across the Mass Ave Bridge up through MIT that was fun on empty streets,
although a crossing car in Cambridge just past the Institute cut things a bit too close. (Okay, the light was red for us, but probably pretty yellow for him.)
Dennis (number 814) connected up with me in Arlington, turns out he'd been in the same start group.
I'd actually gotten a picture of him at the start without knowing it--he was several riders in back of me
(pictured, looking to his right, sporting the yellow LiveStrong band on his left wrist).
We hit the porta-potty stop at 6:30am, then connected with a paceline of about 16 riders.
A bit before the first rest stop, the line broke apart on a hill as we passed a group of slightly slower riders.
It's interesting how the dynamic of a simultaneous hill and catch can splinter a group--some riders of the trailing line always seem to fall in with the caught group.
We rolled into Rest Stop 1 at around 8:20am and met up with Michelle, Lisa, and Cyrille. Dennis and I departed about 10 minutes later, a bit behind the other three.
We caught up and Cyrille hopped in with us--after a bit, he pulled ahead with a faster group.
After a long climb (the first of the two that give the B2B it's character) and then a descent
(is there a more welcome sign for cyclists than the one pictured at left?),
Dennis and I reached the (unofficial) mile 70 Mr. Mike's C-Store stop at 10:05am, took a quick bio break, and continued on.
Somewhere around the 88 mile mark, I clocked my top speed on the ride of about 44 mph. It may have been a bit higher--I wasn't able to keep my eye on it, and for some reason, my computer glitched, showing an earlier (and false!) top speed of 55.9. Bike computers need a "reset max speed only" button. While I'm improving bicycle technology, a small gripe I have with my Contour GPS helmet camera (see review 1 and review 2) is the on-off switch. It's a single button on the back of the camera. To turn it on, depress and release the button and listen for a single tone. To turn it off, press the same button and hold it for 3 seconds to hear a double tone. I'd much rather it have a two-position toggle switch so that it's obvious by touch when it's on (its relatively short battery life means that it's worth turning off and on rather than leaving it in power-hungry sleep mode). 
At the 90 mile mark, Dennis and I took the hard right onto Route 63 and the start of Leviathan.
For the uninitiated (a group in which I counted myself until a day ago), Leviathan is the second of the ride's two serious climbs (ride profile pictured at right).
An observer paying careful attention will note that Levathian gains more altitude in a shorter distance than its unnamed sibling, with an average grade of 3.7%
compared with the first climb's 2.4%.
Leviathan is not without a sense of (black) humor, though, as 3 images in the slide show attest.
I don't want to say that I was going slow up Leviathan, but at one point, I found a spider dangling from my handlebars--by the time I crested the top,
I'd swear that it had woven a web and caught an insect or two.
I caught up with Dennis at Rest Stop 2 in Chesterfield at 11:53am. I popped my second pair of Advil tablets (the first having come at RS1), reapplied sunscreen,
and made my first tactical error of the ride.
At a Bike Boston event back in May, I had my first coconut water (Vitacoca)
and thought that it would be a great replacement for Gatorade.
I started with two bottles of Cocovita, refilled the empties at Rest Stop 1 with the brand that Harpoon supplied, and then refilled
again (warm this time) at Rest Stop 2.
Next time around, I think I'll limit my coconut water intake to 4 bottles.
After a 15 minute stop, we set off for Rest Stop 3--along the way, I forced down the warm liquid, but only because I knew I had to.
Similarly, I swear by Clif Shot Bloks
... until I start to swear *at* them, which was probably around the same point in the ride.
Rest Stop 3 (arrived 1:48pm, departed 2:05pm) was heaven--some shade, cold water, and bananas and orange slices.
At this point on the ride, I was relatively spent, so Dennis pushed on ahead. I rode alone for a bit, then picked up a paceline of 15-20 riders. Now, you should note what I just did there. I used the active voice--"picked up"--which doesn't remotely describe what actually happened. By "picked up," I mean that I waited for the line to pass, then hopped on the back and wheel-sucked for a while. (With that many riders and 4-5 minutes per turn, I'll leave the math to the reader, but suffice it to say, we got to the rest stop before I got to the front.) Or to put it the way Marc brilliantly did after last year's ride, I shared pulling duty the way my son will be sharing the cost of college. Leaving Rest Stop 3, I had two choices--join in with a paceline moving faster than I could comfortably pedal, or ride alone. Preferring to enjoy the scenery and not suffer, I chose the latter. Around mile 134, I picked up a tailwind (same caveat about "picked up"). At mile 138, I came across a sign urging caution at the railroad tracks a mile ahead. A mile?! Do you know how much I can forget in a mile?! Fortunately, Harpoon had seen fit to station a few volunteers just ahead of the tracks, which cut across the road at a severe angle and could easily have caused a fall if not taken carefully. It's worth a digression at this point to commend Harpoon and its volunteers for a superbly organized ride (2011 marking the 11th consecutive edition). From registration to packet pickup to the start to the rest stops to hazard warnings to the (spoiler alert, I finished) finish line and party, they simply couldn't have done a better job. Bravo! At some point along this part of the route, I hit a stretch where I was able to coast for what was probably only 2-3 minutes, but felt much longer. This leads me to riding axiom n+1. if you can coast faster than your ride average, coast. I also noticed what becomes riding axiom n+2. drops as the ride distance increases. 
At the 142.5 mile mark, I made the left across the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge spanning the Connecticut River
(bridge pictured at right--note the sign over the bridge and the stain on the road that looks eerily like that of a vanquished cyclist).
Observation 1: my helmet camera did a pretty impressive job
accommodating a fairly dramatically difference in light levels (see covered bridge video at the end of the slide show).
Observation 2: for a Boston to
Vermont ride, we spent vanishingly little time in the latter (a shade under 6 miles).
As I made the right turn onto Main Street for the home stretch, it occurred to me that I hadn't been passed by what I had imagined would have been a steady stream of screaming pacelines. Sure, I'd been passed, just not by any large groups, and not by Crack O' Dawn or the like. To be fair, with a 45 minute start delay, the 17 mph groups shouldn't have overtaken me, and while COD isn't 17 mph (they reportedly averaged an impressive 19.9 mph), they also started at what I'm guessing was a fair bit later than 6:00am. As I slogged along Main Street/Route 5, and knowing that there was still one hill with some bite ahead, I observed a number of sites that looked like they'd have been a perfect place to site a brewery. Another mile or so along, and it happened--a rider in 545 Velo shorts (the racing arm of COD) blasted by. So much for not being passed by COD--let's just leave it that I wasn't passed by COD "proper." About half way up the final hill, I was caught by a pair of riders. Actually, I don't think of it so much as being caught, but rather, of catching riders in my rear view mirror. As they settled in beside me, I remarked that I was regretting my decision not to have purchased a bike with a triple chain ring (maybe on my next bike). One of the pair replied that he had one and that it wasn't helping. I don't know if the pair cracked or I found another (figurative) gear, but a minute later, and they were back on the horizon of my rear view mirror. 
My spirits jumped as I passed the sign pictured at left.
A few hundred yards ahead (and downhill), I made the right into the brewery and continued down the access road to the finish.
A volunteer relieved me of my bike (it was quickly covered with a blanket for protection and loaded onto a tractor trailer for the trip back to Boston),
another fetched my bag of clean clothes, and I made my way to one of my favorite showers ever (no volunteers there, I was on my own).
Some great barbeque and a trio of Harpoon beer awaited me. Sadly, I just wasn't that hungry or thirsty at that point. Which is too bad, since by my math, I'd burned on the order of 5,400 calories (600 per hour x 9 hours, although Betsy's Garmin calculated 8,000+!). An hour or so changed that, though, and over that span, I connected up with Dennis, Graham, Greg, Betsy, Michelle, and Marc (I never did see any of the other Peet's riders) before the relaxing bus ride back to Boston. By the Numbers  On the Sunday 13 days before the B2B, I weighed in at a too-heavy 176 pounds.
Not wanting to carry any more up Leviathan than I had to, my goal was to drop to 165 by ride day.
As part of a Fat Cyclist fundraiser at the end of last year, I'd been able to shed
pounds at a sufficient rate (see chart at right), but this time around, I didn't quite have the willpower.
Less willpower coupled with the fact that I wasn't exercising every day leading up to the ride, I nonetheless got down to 169.
I finished the B2B at 3:30pm for a total time of exactly 10 hours, 9 hours 9 minutes of that in the saddle. My average worked out to 16.1 mph. The B2B topped my previous long ride (126 miles from Boston to Provincetown with the Outriders on B2B day a year ago), which in turn had topped the 2009 Triple Bypass (118 miles from Evergreen CO to Avon CO). It's interesting to compare my performance in the three.
I assume that you see where this is headed. The farther I ride, and the older I get, the faster I can turn the crank. I'm open to suggestions as to whether I should show my skills at age 60 at the Giro, the Tour, or the Vuelta. The explanation, sadly, is less promising. The TBP included 10,000 feet of climbing. Climbing, of course, is slow. It's a truism that you'll average a higher speed on a flat course than one of the same distance with some elevation change. For me, though, on unfamiliar and technically tricky descents such as those in CO (including the last descent on a wet bicycle path at the end of a long day), descending while braking isn't all that much faster than climbing. As for last year's B2P, I rode the second half by myself and therefore without the benefit of drafting. 
I broke down my average speed over the course of the ride. The first chart at right shows the cumulative average.
For instance, at the end of 2 hours (from the start, including breaks, not just saddle time), my overall average was 17.0 mph.
At the end of hour 5, by contrast, my overall average had dropped to 16.4 mph.
At first glance, it doesn't appear that my speed dropped off all that much.
But the second chart tells a somewhat different story.
Overlaid on the cumulative average is the average for each block of time.
For instance, my average for hours 2 to 4 was 16 mph--coupled with the 17 mph I'd ridden over the first 2 hours, the cumulative was 16.5 mph.
Note how much things dropped off toward the end of the day--15.5 mph for the second to last hour and a leisurely 14.3 for the last hour.
The 17.8 was something of an abberation, aided as it was by a long paceline, flat terrain, and no stops.
Hold off on making making those 2025 Giro/Tour/Vuelta travel plans ...
Oh, and as for that gift? It's the gift of weather. Sure, I've been caught out in some rain, including twice in a big way this year. But for some of my biggest rides (Mount Evans, Triple Bypass, B2B), the weather's not only been great, it's been dramatically different and better than the year before (very cold and rainy for the two CO rides, very hot for the B2B). Last year's Boston to Provincetown with the Outriders was on a hot day (the same day as last year's hot B2B, but the former's location on the breezy Cape kept the temperatures down). |