Bravery

...continued from The Perfect Storm.

A little more background: The Rapha Gents Race is a team event, where a team of 6 riders must do a prescribed route and cross the finish line together and as a complete team of 6. The best way to do this, of course, is to ride together all day, working together, helping each other out and, of course, having fun.  To make it a proper Rapha ride, it also must have lots of climbing and loads of dirt and gravel, and of course, something extra to make it epic - like a blizzard or a grizzly bear!

To quote from the Rapha blog, describing the recent Gent's race in Australia,  "there's no better way to find out if you're a true team, pulling together through the difficulties and attrition to get each other to the finish, or just six individuals racing the clock." This was certainly our theme for the day. 

The Perfect Storm

2012 has been an intense year of cycling for us. We've had some amazing rides. And while I wouldn't say that the Rapha Gent's Race was the focus of our early season, it was a big goal. We had such a blast on the ride last year, when we pulled together a very strong tandem team with experience on both dirt and with long distance, who brought 3 tandems with fat tires, low gears and good brakes to Pennsylvania and surprised more than a few folks, as we crossed the line first and earned some pretty nice swag.

Initially I had assumed that John would like to ride a single on the 2012 edition, but he was so stoked from our ride in 2011, that he wanted to ride tandem again. In fact, he loved it so much that he ordered a new tandem just for this year's event. Well that might be pushing it a bit, but we did get a new tandem, and it really was designed to do Gent's Race type roads. We got it just before Memorial Day and headed up to Vermont for the christening on some amazing dirt roads around East Burke. Those were our RGR shakedown rides, per se, to make sure everything was perfect on the brand new bike.

Green Mountain Double Century - Signs of Sanity

The Green Mountain Double Century was conceived by Sandy Whittlesey, founder of the wildly popular D2R2, for those folks who just didn't find D2R2 to be enough fun. Yeah, bring it on and make it twice as fun. Then see if 1000 people would still show up! For the first year, 2011, more than fifty people inquired about it, but maybe a dozen showed up at the start line, in the pouring rain. Among them was Fear Rothar, along with his Ride Studio Cafe EnduroTeammates, Matt Roy and David Wilcox. The torrential rains stayed with them all day. There may still be sand and grit in the socks John wore that day. But they had a great time and won the race, finishing in a bit over 19 hours. Russ Loomis took a break overnight and finished sometime the next day, but still well within the allowed 40 hours. They were the only finishers.

Sandy has kept the event very low-key. There is no website. There is just the announcement that you see to the right, linked off the UMCA calendar. He wants people who are interested to actually contact him, so he can let them know exactly what they are getting themselves into! And for anyone who has never received the detailed preview from Sandy, let me just say that he tells you everything - possibly way more than you want to know!

Magic Faerie Dust

Magic Faerie Dust is that elusive substance that sometimes comes with new bikes, making them seemingly effortless to ride. It doesn't accompany every new bike, since it results from a combination of good experiences, including the excitement of placing the order, the pleasure of working with the shop, the joy of seeing the results, and the thrill of riding the bike.

Fortunately for us, we had a great Magic Faerie Dust experience last year when we got our custom Seven single bikes from Ride Studio Cafe. So much so, that even after 10,000 miles and numerous rides in heavy rains that really should have washed the substance away by now, I still feel its presence on every ride!  John says the same about his Seven.

So we really should have known that it was risky to our bank account and retirement plan to take a Seven tandem out for a test ride last December. We instantly fell in love with both the concept of that bike and its sublime ride.

DROVES - Days 2 and 3

We had a fabulous Memorial Day weekend in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Vermont has such an amazing network of lightly traveled scenic, and yes, hilly, dirt roads.  We've been taking trips to various parts of the state for years, and are always delighted by what we find. Late last summer Hurricane Irene did significant damage throughout the state, but the residents and authorities responded quickly. Areas with homes were top priority, and it was amazing how fast many of the roads were repaired. I think one of the things that helped is that so many of the roads are dirt, and is  much easier to go out and regrade these roads than to repair the paved ones.  Our hearts ached for the people affected, and we hesitated to go up last fall amid the devastation, but the word went out that tourists SHOULD come. So we tried to do our part to help out the local economy. We had a hillclimb race up Burke Mountain over Labor Day weekend, and took the opportunity as we always do, to ride as many of the dirt roads in the area as we could do in a weekend. We were happy to fond very little damage in the area. With so much uncertainty about the roads on the original route, and needing to book accommodation early, we decided to move DROVES to East Burke. This gave us the opportunity to share even more parts of this wonderful state with our friends. Also by changing to a single location, it would make it easy for folks who wanted to do shorter rides. A few folks took advantage of that opportunity this year, but we still had plenty of company on the longer rides.

DROVES - Day 1

A few friends joined us in East Burke over Memorial Day weekend for the 2012 version of DROVES - Dirt Roads of Vermont Epic Sojourn. As noted in the previous blog entry, DROVES is an informal gathering of friends who like exploring Vermont's dirt roads. The crowd this year included several past participants, Jake Kassen, Emily O'Brien, Dominique Codere, Cristine Lamoureux, David Lafferty, Emily Searles Lafferty, David Wilcox, Ted Lapinski, and first-timers Matt Roy and Mo Bruno-Roy. Brian and Andreas joined us for half the day on Sunday.

Some folks stayed at the Village Inn, while the rest of the gang stayed at the Bike Barn. We met each morning in front of the general store for our rides.

The gang on Day 1

DROVES - Dirt Roads of Vermont Epic Sojourn

Updated for 2013 -

For the past several years, John and I have spent Memorial Day weekend climbing and descending some of the finest dirt roads Vermont has to offer. Over the years, friends have found links to our routes, guessed our starting times, and ridden the same roads at the same time. We love riding with other dirt-road loving folks.

We will be staying in East Burke, and starting rides at 8AM in front of the General Store. We usually ride as a social group and regroup at the top and bottom of the big climbs.

Misguided Angels - Flèche

Warning: It was a long ride. This is a long post! But it is mostly photos...

Last month I blogged that my favorite randonneuring event is the Flèche Vélocio. This past weekend, The Misguided Angels had an awesome flèche ride. The team this year included members from several previous teams. Dena and I have now done 4 flèche rides together. Norm and David had each been on one flèche (with me) prior to this one. This meant that everyone was quite familiar with the drill. Although it would be a first meeting for Norm and David, which means they would have plenty to talk about over the 24 hours!

This route had some striking differences from my previous routes. First, it had some complicated travel and logistics. It was much more urban, and it was much flatter than any previous route.

So many rides, so little time to blog!

When I started this blog a few months back, I wondered if I would find enough interesting things to write about in the winter to keep a blog going. Well I managed to come up with enough to write about for a few months and had enough time to keep it pretty current. But ironically, as the riding season has kicked into full gear, I am finding that there just aren't enough hours in the day to blog about all the rides!

Regular readers know I kept myself busy with some climbing in March and April. 

Here's some of the other stuff I've been up to.

Just after we returned from our all too brief vacation in California, we had the Ride Studio Cafe Brevet Season kickoff party and 100km ride.  Despite a dire forecast, we had a big crowd on the ride out to Lost Lake. Rob and Patria even took time away from the Studio to join us for the ride!

Gargantuan Bragging Rights

Just back from massage, where Morgan had to spend considerable time working on my shoulder that I likely strained while patting myself on the back!!!

This email arrived in my inbox a few days ago...

Thank you for participating! Congratulations on your Specialized Challenge effort - and what a challenge it was! Specialized and Strava tasked you to put in 47 days of relentless climbing and suffering and that you did. Nearly 11,000 global participants climbed close to 420 million feet of elevation in just six weeks. What amazing results! Without a doubt the most difficult challenge yet, just over 700 riders completed the goal. An extra round of applause goes out to these die-hard riders. A Classic Climbing Challenge from Specialized highlighted a few extraordinary riders who are, apparently, born to climb. In the end, Brian Toone of Hoover, Alabama and Jeremy Philippe of Grenoble, France pushed one another near the 500,000 feet of elevation mark, blowing away the challenge goal in only a few weeks. Ultimately, Toone took top honors, climbing 468,661 feet in 96 rides for an average of 4,881 feet per ride. Not to be outdone, top female riders kept the competition strong as Pamela Blalock of Watertown, Massachusetts and Virginia Vaquero Casey of Morgan Hill, California traded off the lead on their way to over 200,000 feet of vertical ascent throughout the challenge. In the end, the two finished just 4,516 feet apart with Casey inching ahead. She climbed a total of 216, 206 feet over just 34 rides for an astounding average of 6,359 feet per ride. Congratulations again to all the competitors around the world who made this challenge so fun, motivational and truly extraordinary! Keep it up, Strava and Specialized

Purgatory To Pack Monadnock - from Milford, NH

I like riding off the beaten track, looking for new and interesting roads and cafes.

Over the years I have mapped out loads of different rides all of which could qualify as a favorite ride on any given day. I have now created a page with links to RideWithGPS maps for many of these rides. As I go back out and do the rides again, I will add links to posts with photos to help entice folks to try a ride. This is the first!

This ride starts in Milford, NH. Due to a very rough descent, I decided it is better in the opposite direction than I rode yesterday (map link below is in the recommended direction). I'd rather climb a rough road than descend one. Either direction has stupendous views. As with most of my rides, there are a couple sections of dirt.

Flèche Vélocio

My favorite randonneuring event is the Flèche Vélocio. This is a team event where all members of the team work and ride and finish together. Traditionally the event is scheduled for Easter weekend, but in northern climates, a bit of leeway is granted to accommodate for less than pleasant riding conditions at that time of year. In France, there is a single destination, but in the US, we are allowed regional destinations. The date (a range of start/finish times) and actual destination is set by the regional organizer, but the team members select their own starting point, actual start time, and route.

There are some basic rules - 24 hours, covering at least 360km, with at least 25km done in the last two hours and no stop more than 2 hours. You can do a large loop, but not repeated small loops. The team consists of between 3 and 5 cycles - so a tandem or triplet counts as one team member. At least 3 members must finish to be granted credit. Complete RUSA rules can be found here.

Grace, Finally Achieved!

If you've been reading the blog from the beginning (not that long ago), you may recall that last December, Fear Rothar and I took part in Rapha's Ride to Redemption. Actually, if you read yesterday's entry, you may be aware of this as well! But for those who don't know, and just want the Reader's Digest condensed version, or those with short memories...

Last December Rapha ran this little challenge to do 500km in the last 9 days of 2011.  They called it the Ride to Redemption. Fear Rothar and I decided to have some fun with the theme and came up with all sorts of irreverent redemption themed rides. We planned a ride to Redemption Rock, Purgatory Chasm, Purgatory Falls, Mt Grace, Paradise Lost Lake, Pagan Hill, Brimstone Lane, and World's End, along with a few short local rides to nearby redemption centers. We both managed to get well over the 500km, and do most of the rides, but uncooperative weather caused us to replace two of the themed rides with others with lower elevation, or in the case of the final one, when we were just exhausted, with a much less ambitious one.

Well, the arrival of our patches last week prompted me to think about those two rides. That and my new challenge which involves accumulating altitude...

A Heavenly Ride to Purgatory Chasm

According to my very extensive research on Wikipedia, Purgatory is the condition of purification or temporary punishment by which those who die in a state of grace are believed to be made ready for Heaven. We mapped out this ride last December as our final ride in the Rapha Ride to Redemption challenge. However by the time the final day came around, we were already fully redeemed - and the weather was pretty miserable, and we ended up bailing on the temporary punishment that day.

Well we finally got our Festive 500 patches last week, and it reminded me that I should go do this ride.

Unlike December 31, it was certainly a heavenly day today, as seven of us rolled out for this hellishly hilly (the temporary punishment) ride to Purgatory Chasm.

 

Done and Dusted

Last week I mentioned that I was taking part in a climbing challenge through the Strava website. Those who know me well know that this sort of challenge suits me to a T, since it has nothing to do with speed at all. I could ride along smelling the flowers, stopping to take photos and sampling the offerings of cafes along the way. All that said, a few of my riding buddies have been surprised by some of the gratuitous climbs I've thrown in on recent rides.

The challenge has been a bit ...ummm... challenging to do in this area, because it's so far to get to real mountains. What we do have nearby is plenty of short steep little hills, which can actually be much more painful than a long climb up a proper mountain. It's not too hard to create a route with 50 feet per mile of climbing, but it does take all day to get 3-4,000 feet of climbing! Those lucky folks out in California can easily get two or three times that climbing in a day ride :-)