Steady State

That was the nature of my ride Sunday, steady state, on the gas 99% of the time. A loop I do a couple times a year links up the Ashuelot, Fort Hill and Cheshire dirt rail trails with some hilly gravel roads into a 50 mile loop. In the first 90 minutes, there is about 50ft of climbing. The sometimes soft rail bed and self-created wind resistance are your motivators for power. With no descents, there are no let-ups, save for a few road crossings you'd best exercise caution at.

The 2200ft of climbing happens on 10 miles of mostly gravel roads between Brattleboro, VT and Keene, NH, late in the ride. I usually ensure my legs are wobbly by then for maximum effect. The route is perfect for a 'cross bike. Occasionally I bring a 29er hardtail though, as I can explore interesting side options. After a deluge over the weekend, I couldn't subject my almost new Trek Cronus to the mud I'd no doubt would encounter. My Superfly hardtail is way past due for drivetrain replacement, so why not get one more messy ride out of it? The cassette, rings and chain have been sitting on the bench for a while now awaiting swap-out.

This one's for Dave. Wolfing down PB sandwich 90min into ride.

No worries, no singletracks were harmed in the making of this photo.

I completed the loop in record time for any kind of bike I've taken there and in less than ideal conditions. I felt it too. Wrecked. I went into the Keene Shaw's supermarket to pick up a sandwich and maybe some chocolate milk. In the natural beverages cooler where the iced tea was, I noticed Mountain Dew. Huh? Closer inspection revealed glass bottles with retro labeling. That's odd, I thought. Then I read the ingredients label. No High Fructose Corn Syrup, only sugar! Sporadically, Pepsico has market a "Throwback" version of Mountain Dew made with sugar, not HFCS. I grew up on the stuff in the 1970's before HFCS found its way into everything. I'm not one of the subscribers that HFCS is inherently more evil than sugar. All simple sugar is evil except in limited situations. What I do like though, is sugar sweetened Mountain Dew. It tastes different, better. Cleaner finish to it, not as heavy of a syrupy feel to it. It was kind of expensive, and I certainly don't need a case of that around the house, so I bought only one bottle and savored it on my way home.  Nice treat to cap off a satisfying ride.

No HFCS, yet nothing to indicate it's special on bottle.

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Kids, be careful of what you put into your body

Over the past few years, I've been getting recurring pain behind one or both kneecaps with increasing frequency.  It seems to be correlated with a few things. Foremost is excessive volume plus intensity without enough recovery. I think mostly the bike is responsible. Running doesn't seem to exacerbate the problem, it just delays it going away. I can run with zero pain when riding hurts.  Letting my knees get cold also aggravates the problem. Even when it is not cold out, sometimes if my knees are achy, I'll feel them, and they are cold. The other thing I noticed is there seems to be a direct correlation with dehydration and achy knees. Often, when I know I'm low on hydration, my knees will be tender going up or down stairs. This isn't all the time, just when two or three of the above are present simultaneously.

Back in March, I went down to North Carolina for an intensive week of mountains riding. On the first day, Arik and I went out for short, hard spin to Sassafras Mtn and back. It got wicked cold on the ride back as a winter weather front moved in late in the day. My knees got extremely cold. Whole body got cold in fact. Back at the house, I was pretty much an invalid when it came to the stairs. I needed to support most of my body weight with both hands on rails. The pain was excruciating. I was probably dehydrated, and we went awfully hard up Sassafras. I thought my trip was doomed, but a couple Aleve, rehydration, I was good to go the next day. I think I wore AmFib tights. Knees stayed warm. I did not have trouble with it the rest of the trip.

I was concerned though. Definitely as I get older, my body parts are breaking down.  I started searching for remedies. Several people I know, including my dad and long-time riding partner Steve G., swear by glucosamine. Steve has been taking various preparations of it for many years, my dad the last couple years. My dad has had both knees worked on years ago and was having a lot of trouble in his 70's. Since he started taking Osteo-Biflex, he claims his knees feel the best in 25 years. That is a pretty bold statement.

So I picked up a bottle of glucosamine with MSM at Sam's Club and started taking it right after I got back from my trip in March.  I took recommended dosage of 1500mg per day, a tablet in the morning and evening.

Fast forward to the week leading up to Memorial Day. I was increasingly feeling not well. It was a not quite put your finger on it, kind of a general malaise thing. My weight was mysteriously going up. I stayed below 160 lbs almost all winter, and my weight typically goes down in the spring when my total training volume goes up. Instead, my weight peaked above 165 lbs with a 10.5% body fat on the Tanita scale. I was even trimming calories as weight was going up.  WTF!

That wasn't all of it. I'd wake up with a headache every morning. I rarely get headaches, and now I seemed to have a low-grade headache most of the time. I could hear my heartbeat go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh in my ears too, kind of like I had pressure in my head. I would have thought maybe a sinus infection, but I never got sick and had zero sinus symptoms.  Then to top this all off, a couple times going out at lunch, I bonked immediately. One in particular was an easy run day. Two miles out I was in a hallucinogenic bonk state. I almost had to sit down, it was so bad. Something was very wrong. I started thinking Lyme disease? Pancreatitis? All kinds of scary things went through my mind.

Then on a whim, I Googled glucosamine and weight gain. I got 800,000 hits and started reading. Wow. Glucosamine, in dosages that people often take for osteoarthritis, can wreak havoc on your whole insulin response thing. Didn't understand the minutia of mechanisms behind it, but it appears that glucosamine causing Type 2 diabetes systems is far more supported in research than mending bad knees. In fact, the most thorough study concluded that glucosamine is statistically insignificant in helping joint pain.

So I checked the flip side, Googling glucosamine and weight loss. 2.5 Million hits! Oh man, it can't be both ways, can it? Well yeah, people have amazing ways to attribute effects to causes, aka placebo effect.  But then I started reading. Pretty much every correlation with glucosamine and weight loss were cessation of weight loss. That is, people that were in weight loss programs stopped losing weight when they started taking glucosamine.

That pretty much clinched it for me. I couldn't think of anything else that changed in my diet or lifestyle to be causing the changes I was experiencing. I stopped taking glucosamine.  That was about two weeks ago.

The first couple days, I didn't notice any change. But then on the third or fourth day, I woke up without feeling like I had pressure in my head and no nagging headache. Of course, my weight was still up.

Now, two weeks after stopping glucosamine, I feel 100% normal again, and a little weight has come off. Did glucosamine do this to me? I didn't have 100 of me to control this experiment. I'll never know. One thing is certain, I won't blindly jump into a supplement again.

So what about my knees? There's also chondroitin.  Seems much less risky from what I read. Strangely, I think the glucosamine was working. Maybe a much smaller dose is all I need. Steve takes a Hammer product with glucosamine, 250mg I think. I was taking 6x that amount. Maybe I need to adjust my bike(s) fit. I have Pruit's book on bike fit and common cycling maladies. Pain behind kneecap is often over-use/over-training related and extended rest period can make it go away. I'm not doing anything atypical from seasons past, other than I'm 50 now. I'd be interested in any experience readers have had with this.

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There's not much to not like about this loop

One of the earliest regular rides I started doing after I moved to New England in 1997 linked Deer Jump, Wood Hill and Rafton reservations together from my workplace in Tewksbury. The distance varied, but sometimes I worked in up to 18 miles on a lunch ride. The area is densely built up with commercial and residential structures. You'd never know it most of the time, sufficiently buffered from the urban environment.

Perhaps the crown jewel of the route is the 6 miles of continuous singletrack along the Merrimack River. The eastern half is flat, the western half chocked full of punchy climbs. Sketchy bridges are sprinkled throughout.  Most of the terrain flows and begs for speed. My early "master's base" was built riding these trails from work.

These days, I get over there only a few times a year despite being only 25 minutes away by car. It's great for an easy-day ride, like I needed this past Sunday. I brought my "sofa bike," the Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc. Totally overkill for these trails, but bombing down Wood Hill was a blast, almost embarrassing how easily the bike mowed over all the rocks.

Handlebar deep wild flowers: check.

Sunny meadows: check.

Tunnel of blooming laurel: check.

What's not to like?

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4NaaP: Fun in the Sun or Beat by the Heat?

Boy, we go from one extreme to the other. On Memorial weekend, we cancelled a northern Vermont ride due to snow in the forecast. Minimal chances of precipitation were forecast for this past weekend, but it was going to be HOT.  Five hardy (or foolhardy?) souls thought a 4NaaP ride was the thing to do on Saturday. It got even hotter than forecasts predicted in the White Mountains...

The 4NaaP acronym stands for Four Notches and a Pass.  This classic loop can be ridden either CW or CCW. I typically like to ride it clockwise, as it makes three of the five climbs more challenging. The climbs are Kinsman, Franconia (via Rt 18), Crawford, Bear and Kancamagus.

Heading out just after 9am, it was already hot. I had sweat beading up on my arms within a mile of leaving the cars. Once we got through Woodstock on Rt 112, the climbing started and the talking stopped. It seemed our effort was in direct proportion to grade, in that we were in denial that we were actually climbing a 12% grade and refused to let our speed drop. Yet the group stayed together as we crested Kinsman Notch. Interestingly, this effort was good enough to claim 3rd through 6th place on Strava for the four of us running GPSs. That did some damage. We all knew it, but we kind of swept it under the rug.

After some rollers en route to Franconia via Rt 116, we hit the feared "Cannon Mountain" climb on Rt 18. Unfortunately, we took a little shortcut on Wells Rd, which cut off the beginning of any Strava segments that I'm sure are defined for this climb. Dave and Brett led out at a very stiff pace. I got scared. Do I try to stay with them and go thermonuclear later in the ride, or do I behave rationally and back down? Well, I think Dave and Brett came to their senses and backed off just a bit. Did I do the same? Noooooo! I maintained the same power up and over the top. I wanted snow to lay in when I reached I-93, I was so hot. Needless to say, the snow that fell here a week earlier was long gone.

When Keith reached the top, he was in a bit of a pickle. He had heat goosebumps. That can't be good. He clearly was overheating. It was still morning and it was going to get much hotter. We had three more climbs and 75% of the ride to go. Dave and I had somewhat of an advantage on the others in that we not too long ago spent a week riding in some hot weather in Utah. Keith had zero acclimatization.  He did the rational thing and bailed, heading back to Lincoln via the bike path through the notch.

Top of second climb at Cannon Mtn

The rest of us pressed on. We decided to add a second water stop on the planned 90+ mile ride by stopping in Twin Mountain. I had already gone through three large water bottles in about 100 minutes of riding. The other guys only took two bottles each.

We had slight tailwind on Rt 302. We took turns pulling. Mike probably felt he was being tag-teamed, as he was capping off a huge volume week with this ride and was not exactly fresh. Dropping down the steep side of Crawford Notch is always a blast, hitting 55mph on the 13% grade. We reached Bartlett in no time, claiming the Strava KOM from Rt 3 to the notch in the process (who defines these things?). Brett wanted to keep going, still having a little water in two bottles. I thought huh? We have the two biggest climbs of the ride to go in the hottest part of the day. I was stopping.

Mt Washington from Rt 302

My Garmin showed a 21.3mph avg when we stopped, clearly a PR pace for this loop. I really had doubts about maintaining that over the next two climbs in the heat.

Passing through Crawford Notch

Bear Notch was next. This one climbs at an almost perfect 6% grade for 1200ft.  Dave and I joked while driving up about slowly ramping the pace up on this one to see how long it takes others to crack. Evil, eh? Dave is riding exceptionally strong these days, and I thought I'd actually be one of the first to crack. However, Dave didn't seem to be interested in going any harder than I was going. We crested together less than a minute ahead of Mike and Brett.

Next up was the final climb, Kancamagus Pass. Surprisingly, I wasn't the first to suffer muscle spasms. That would be Brett, who I've never heard complain about cramping. Slow twitch guys seem to have much less problem with it for some reason. I was pretty amazed actually that I hadn't seized up yet in this heat, about 3.5hrs into a hard ride. I did add electrolytes to my first three bottles and I was consuming massive quantities of fluids. But it wasn't two miles later when one of my inner thighs fired a warning volley. Yep, getting over the Kanc was going to be interesting.

I waved goodbye to Dave with Brett and Mike behind me, all four of us spread out. I could do nothing more than soft pedal, else about every muscle in my legs would revolt with uncontrolled firings. I so badly wanted to be on the other side coasting 30 mph for 10 miles. I had to earn it first. Stupidly, I switched my Garmin screen to one that showed average speed for the ride. My 21.3mph average quickly dropped below 20mph. When I reached the top, 19.1mph. Losing over 2mph that many miles into a ride shows how pathetically slow I climbed the Kanc. Dave said he would wait for us but was nowhere to be found. He probably gloated all the way back to Lincoln knowing that I was getting no assistance into the wind. I had to earn the descent too.

I waited for Brett, but Brett doesn't descend like I do, so I was soon alone again. Part way down, on a particularly fast section, a truck pulling a large trailer slowly overtook me. While the trailer was next to me, the guy pinched me off. I'm going 30-40mph, about ready to shoulder-lean into the trailer, with my right calf about ready to rub the guardrail. WTF! I slammed on my brakes, shot out behind the asshole, then waved my arms in a "WTF was that!" manner. The guy then slammed on his brakes, nearly causing me to rear end him. He then took off. He was no more than 6" from me going upwards of 40mph squeezed up against guardrail with nowhere to go. This was the business logo on the trailer: http://precisionapplications.net.

When I got back to the cars, I asked Dave if he was buzzed by this guy. Yep. Then when Brett and Mike rolled in, same thing. This asshole didn't pinch them off as badly as me. He's going to kill somebody. At 40mph, NH law requires minimum 4ft clearance, and bikes do have a right to use the traffic lane. There is a small shoulder on most of the Kanc, which with new chipseal, was rough. I was in the traffic lane within a foot of the white line, perfectly legit. There were no oncoming cars in all our cases. No excuses. I was going to call the state police on this guy but calmed down a little by the time I got home. Many drivers believe cyclists do not have a right to ride in the traffic lane will let you know you don't belong there. It was not taught when I took drivers ed, and it never shows up in those stupid tests you take when you renew. I thought maybe a call from the police could correct misinformed behavior. Or not.

Changing at the cars was an ordeal. Seems anyway I moved caused my legs to lock up. Then as soon as I dropped my bibs, a Lincoln cop slowly rolls through the parking lot. Shit! I couldn't find my boxers. He must have not seen me. Dave, being the good friend he is, capitalized on my panic by laying on his freaking horn! Yeah, I'll remember that one. I didn't get arrested, but Dave better hope I don't show up for one of his Tuesday night rides.

Anyway, the ride was quite successful despite the heat. I just barely eked out a 20.0mph avg for the 92mi, 6300ft ride, which is almost as fast as the last time I did this loop under less oppressive conditions. I drank about eight large bottles of fluids, probably over 200 ounces. Brett and Dave probably consumed a little more than half that much. Crazy, eh? Looking forward to more rides like 4NaaP this summer, including D2R2 in August.

Drive home in Nashua. 97F.

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Choose or Double Lose

A battle has been raging in my head and body. I registered for the August Mt Washington bicycle hillclimb race after a few-year hiatus from the August event. I'd like to give it my best shot, maybe even strive for a new best time if the weather gods smile on the Rock Pile on August 17. I feel I still have some unfinished business there. My current best of 1:05:33 was when I broke a rear spoke and my wheel went totally wonky. I had to stop twice to apply medieval techniques to coerce my wheel to stop rubbing the frame. Of course, without a spoke wrench, I was only partially successful. The rear tire still nearly rubbed  through the carbon chain stay by the time I reached the summit. What did I leave on the table that day?

Also in August, nine days before Mt Washington, I plan to to run the CIGNA 5k again in Manchester, NH. I did very well last year with minimal training.  Just days away from turning 50, I would have handily won the 50+ age category out of hundreds. Seems my VOmax training on the bike carries over nicely to running. I ran sub-18 minutes last year. This year I'd like to run sub-17:30, or about a 5:38 pace. I can break 18 minutes running an hour a week with minimal speed work, but not 17:30. That will take some serious commitment, particularly speed work starting about now.

So therein lies the conundrum.  How can I peak for both of these events so close to each other? I would need to do speed/intensity work in each discipline 2-3x per week, which is simply not sustainable. Tri-guys do training bricks, but their events aren't 17 or 60 minute anaerobic puke fests.  I need to train at higher intensities than at what triathletes train.  I'm not sure which one is more important to me, PR the 5k or PR Mt Washington.

My cycling form is quite good right now, hitting power numbers consistent with very good results in seasons past.  I find, however, that I'm tired almost all of the time. Too often, I attempt or plan a VOmax workout on the bike on Tuesdays, only to quickly learn it just isn't happening. I shut it down or don't even attempt intensity work. Mondays and Thursdays used to be my recovery days when I did not run. Now I run 5mi or 10k on those days. I simply don't get rest. And I haven't even started speed work on foot yet. So something has to give. If I continue down the current path, I will surely self destruct and fail to do well in either event.

A new 5k best is probably more attainable. I'd trade one of my bike VOmax sessions for, say, a 4x1200m session on foot. Done deal. But I'd be lucky to break 1:10 on Mt Washington under that program, or be a contender in any number of other cycling events later this summer.  Running is a new world, full of all kinds of pitfalls and pleasant rewards. There are not as many mysteries left in cycling endeavors. Over the 12 years I've been competing in hillclimb events, the training process is pretty well dialed. A new PR at 50 would be quite satisfying though.

My triathlete friends say I need to combine riding and running on my hard days so I can get rest days back into my week. I've tried running after a hard bike workout. It sucks. A typical VOmax workout on the bike completely depletes me. How can one get high value speed work on foot in that state? If I backed off on the bike work some, say did only four instead of six intervals, I'd leave something for the run, but then I wouldn't reach the same level of proficiency on the bike. The only way going for bests in both events could work is if speed work on the bike and running substantially compliment each other, in that trading bike VOmax time for running speed work is almost as good as doing all of the bike VOmax work. I don't know.

Historically, I've always focused more on the process than results. There's a lot less stress and let down that way, and burn-out is much less likely to occur. Strange how something I picked up only to improve bone density came to such a lofty level in my psyche. Any thoughts how to get through the next two months without imploding?

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Not what I expected

The Hill Junkie blog ain't dead... yet. Back-to-back proposals at work and lack of inspiring short topics to share relegates blog time far down on the pecking order. Income, sleep, riding and home projects leave no bloggy time.  I do have a few important topics brewing, including one that I've done a fair amount of research on and will no doubt be a polarizing topic like gun control or other ideological controversies of the day.

But this post is not about that. The weather this holiday weekend thwarted best crafted plans. Just like they say in war, battle plans never survive contact with the enemy. The enemy this weekend was the weather - perhaps the suckiest Memorial Weekend weather since I moved to New England in 1997. We had a group ride planned in northern Vermont on Saturday. The forecast called for lots of rain and frigid temps. We're not stupid. We don't go out on 200km misery fests just so we can brag about how "epic" it was to those who opted out. The ride was cancelled.

So I did solo repeats on nearby Pack Monadnock instead. Short, but potent workout. I brought my hardtail MTB so I could have assurance of controlling my speed on the descents with disc brakes. A couple portions of Pack exceed 20% grade. When wet with tree debris on it, coming down can be quite terrifying on 23mm tires with caliper brakes. Naively, I didn't think I needed booties. I wore other winter gear. My feet promptly froze. The dense drizzle quickly saturated everything and added 10 pounds to the weight I had to carry up each time. I felt a little wobbliness in my legs on the fourth climb, so I called it good and headed back down to Wilton where I started. It took the whole drive home with floor heat on high before I got all the feeling back in my feet.

Sunday afternoon, the weather finally broke. The sun made an appearance. Cathy and I decided to get in a hike. We attempted Mt Cardigan a couple years ago in the fall. We had to turn around half way up because there was too much ice and we didn't have spikes. Other than being wet, it didn't even register that conditions might not be much better this Memorial Day weekend...

We parked at the AMC lodge on the east side. Driving in, I said to Cathy, "Is that snow up there?" She said no way. It sure did look like it. Cardigan just breaks 3000ft. I knew northern VT got snow, lots of it in places. I didn't think this far south and this low was at risk.

We no more than started hiking than we encountered snow. The snowline was down to 1500ft. I got pretty pissed, as I was hiking in an old pair of running shoes (open mesh top, but grip extremely well on wet granite). Plus, it was way colder than at home. I didn't bring hat or gloves. Silly me.

About half way up the Manning Trail, the snow got deeper, making climbing treacherous. I gave up trying to avoid the water running down the middle of the trail. You could get traction there, not in the snow to the side. My feet were soaked anyway. Two days in a row with numb feet. Grrrrrrr!

We kept going and eventually reached the open slickrock ledges approaching the Firescrew summit. We had to hike and scramble against rushing torrents of water in many places. Guess the warm granite was melting the snow quickly. Didn't warm the water any. I'm sure it was 32F.

The wind was ridiculous up top. You had to brace yourself to stand. Maybe 50mph? The windchill had to be in the teens too. I didn't know how I was going to keep warm if we traversed over to the Cardigan summit along the exposed ridgeline. To make matters dicier, random bursts of rain and stinging sleet moved through too. Unbelievably raw. I wondered why, in an hour of hiking, we hadn't seen another soul...

I wasn't going to let the mountain beat me again. Cathy was certainly good to go, as she wore more layers, including an outer Goretex shell with a hoody. Smaht, unlike me.

There were many deep pools of frigid water and knee deep slushy snow drifts to plod through in between the two peaks. The final scramble to the summit was really going to suck. Zero trees to break the wind, just bare granite. I made haste and took shelter behind the fire tower base while Cathy made her way up. There was nobody else at the summit, which I thought very unusual for a holiday weekend. But then other would-be hikers weren't standing there shivering with frozen feet, hands and ears like some dimwit cyclist dude either.

We started heading down the other side as soon as Cathy made it up. We saw the first people of the hike a ways below us. Looked like they were skipping the summit. We planned to take Clark and Holt trails back down. They looked a little less steep than Manning. They were, but they were also much wetter and snowier.

It was so good to get back below treeline. My feet were never going to be the same, as I had to continually tromp through water. Cathy wore Goretex hiking boots. Smaht girl. Her feet eventually got wet too, but not cold.

There was a really cool waterfall most of the way down. It doesn't show on any maps, and I suspect it is only an intermittent waterfall, such as during a rain storm or heavy snow melt. I had to scramble down to get a photo of it.

We got back to the car with 5.8 miles in 2.6hr moving time on the Garmin. Cathy said it was a hard hike and wasn't sure she'd do it again. I was worried about her knee that she had routed out a couple years ago, but it gave her no grief during or after the hike. Just lots of DOMS the next day. I too worried about my knees that have been finicky lately (maybe a post on that later this week). I did ok. Normally, steep descents wreak havoc on my knees and give me shin splints. At least this time the score was Mr & Mrs Hill Junkie: 1, Cardigan 0. Here's a photo dump from the hike and a couple I stole from the Internet.
 

Part way up Manning trail in stream of water. This rock is were we were forced to turn

around last time hiking here. 

Near the Firescrew summit at just over 3000ft

In the saddle between Firescrew and Cardigan on Mowglis Trail.

 

Cardigan summit. Frozen water. Rain/sleet squalls in distance.

Looking back up at Cardigan summit from south face. Hard to tell, but quite steep. Cathy

is leaning into the wind to stay upright.

Clark trail. Water running down everywhere. Surprisingly, my Nike Structura's gripped extremely

well on wet granite. Cathy did slip and fall once.

Around 2000ft elevation. Absolutely treacherous. No water running down here to carry snow away.

There's something wrong with this scene...

Unnamed water fall close to junction of trails called Grand Junction.

Jay Peak, from their FB page. Powder skiing on Memorial Day weekend!

Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, NY. 30" of new snow!! There's a bike race up this

in less than three weeks. I'll probably be doing the MTB race at Whiteface that weekend.

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Wa Wa Wachusett

Multi-disciplinary cyclists had many competition choices this past Saturday. New Englanders had no less than three MTB, one road and one hillclimb race to chose from. I've raced the Sterling Road Race before. Doesn't suit me well. Chance for wet roads compounded an already risky course. The Weeping Willow MTB race is drawing ever bigger fields. Again, lots of fast singletrack and periodic sketchy passes had risk painted all over it. How have I become so risk adverse?

Over at Wachusett Mtn was the first hillclimb race of the 2013 BUMPS challenge. This race was added to the series last year. I did it then, it was a good time. Several people I hadn't seen in a while would be there. An uphill race is ideal when weather is foul. Risk is very low. The decision was easy.

I wasn't stressing over this race at all. My plan was to train right through the weekend. No taper. I'll save the stressing for events later this summer, like the Washington hillclimb or CIGNA 5k run.

Warming up, the roads were wet and it was a bit misty out. The summit was socked in. At least it wasn't raining. There were several names I didn't recognize signed up, some from out of the area. I didn't bother to research if they were threats. The usual local threats were not signed up this time. Even though beating my time last year was pretty much out of the question and not a goal, I at least stood a chance to win the age group and some swag.

About fifty 50-59 year old men and women queued up.  Richard Fries MC'd the event. After pre-race instruction, I asked him if race organizer Marti Shea was racing, as I didn't see her. Richard asked if I was afraid of getting "skirted." Yep.   It was a mass start race with mixed experience riders, but I was at the front and Mile Hill Rd would bust things apart in one minute anyway. We go off, Brett Rutledge leads out initially, then I take over. When it got steep, I stood to string things out. After a couple minutes, one rider was left on my wheel. Who was he? I went pretty hard.

Brett Rutledge killing himself to keep Bill Dunkerley behind him. Bill came out ahead in the end.

Photo by Heather Dunkerley.

The most persistent gradient of the climb is on Mile Hill Rd outside the state park. I maintained a firm pace, but another rider quickly rolled up out of nowhere. Now I had two clingers on my wheel. I knew the grade would slacken further up on the mountain and we'd probably encounter some stiff headwind. There were many opportunities to draft on this mountain. Since I was not going for a PR, I at least wanted to race smartly enough to protect a potential win.

Shortly after turning into the state park, being shadowed by Tom Fagan and Dave O'Keeffe.

Photo by Heather Dunkerley

So I did something I almost never, ever do in a hillclimb. I capitulated and forced the other two to come up. They were Tom Fagan and Dave O'Keeffe. I shamelessly sat on wheels for the next 3-4 minutes, no doubt losing seconds against the clock had I continued to kill myself. But I knew this climb well. I knew where the steepest part was and it would not be into the wind. I would seal the deal there, about half a mile before the finish line.

Earlier in the week during my lunch interval loop, I averaged 483W for two minutes in one of my intervals.  I just needed to do that again and I'd be all set. I did exactly that, and Tom and Dave started to fade in the fog behind me.  I finished in 16:45, about 30 seconds slower than last year, but a solid win with about 15sec gap. Tim Ahearn won overall in 14:37, a new course record.

Fries @ awards

I won a 12-pack of Wachusett Brewery beer. Forget which brew. Brett promptly laid claim to it, since I don't imbibe. Had I not messed around mid race and came in another five seconds faster, I could have earned cash for 3rd place overall, assuming Tom didn't pip me at the line. A lesson for next time.

We had great food at awards with Richard funny as heck as always. There were auctions and raffles for MS too. Bill Dunkerley won a trip to Mallorca next spring. Marti, Joe, Mary and many others did a great job organizing and executing this event. It was refreshing to see so many first timers there, including young people.

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