Big Bikes

19 Hills

That's what I've been thinking about. Even during other races, I'm going up a climb thinking "is this like The VT 50, how would this gear feel on those climbs?". The other race is all like "Where are you right now? Your eyes just glazed over...you're like a thousand miles away". And I'm like "No race baby, I'm right here with you...hey you, what's the name of this race again?".

Last year I may have geared too hard...but I may not have. It was wet, I wasn't planning on wet. I had to switch to bigger, slower rolling tires at the last minute the night before. I should have geared down at that point but I'm not too quick like that. My time was better two years ago I geared lower, finished in a better time, but I placed worse. I was also riding a new, heavier, and unfamiliar bike. Maybe I need Doug Jansen to make some calculations for me. He seemed to have The Race to The Top Vermont figured out alright. Seriously, if you're bored here today, go check his report out, he drops some single speed science in there too.

Hi reader, you are now inside my brain, isn't this fun? Now imagine hours of this while I'm trying to sleep. Things were so easy back when I rode a geared bike, I would just go to race with the attitude "I am not going to have fun and I am going to go out there and suck it and suck it and suck it". And that's what would happen. I swear I am working on a kind of Bi-Cycle-Ography wherein I tell the tale of my transition from slow-ass geared rider to not as slow rider with one gear and many excuses. I'll publish on the coldest, darkest day of winter I'm sure.

So where's the point? Is it in there? Ow! I thought I asked you if you had any needles in there? Cretin. The point was that in preparation for Da Fitty as race promoter Michael J. Silverman himself calls it, I raced back to back long-ass XC races all month, finishing with the 2.5 hour slog Sunday. The beauty (and I do use the term "beauty" with my right eyebrow raised to the ceiling) of a Saturday race is that I can go out and ride on Sunday (after of course going to the pub on Saturday night). I had this dream of completing the NEBC Wednesday night hill loop front and back with my own additions sometime before Da Fitty. The short(ish) punchy bastard climbs it is comprised kind of mimic the terrain of Die Fünfzig, as the Germans call it.

I started off the loop with Miriam, trying to do each climb twice as she did it once. She was too quick though and the plan had to get a little more amorphous. By the time she spun off I still felt the need to bang out something like nine more climbs. By my count on that profile map above there are at least that many. For those of you who care and for me in a couple hours when I forget, here you (and me ) go:

Hutchinson X 4
Waltham/Ridge (Cable Tower) X 2 (only once all the way to the tower)
New Meadow Etc X 1
Myopia X 2
School X 1 (more than enough ARGH!)
Eastern X 2
Access Road X 1
Clifton X 3
Concord X 1
Old Concord X 1
Access Road/Cut over on Highland/Eastern from the stop sign by the park X 1

And that's 19 climbs in the spank myself bank.

Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about the fact that I actually committed to the SSWC09 trip last night and bought my damn ticket, maybe.