Here is the route:
And here is the elevation profile:
Chuck came by my place at 3:00AM, we loaded my bike on the back of his car, and it immediately started to rain. And then it started to rain harder, thunder, and lightening. I have not seen a storm like that in Boston in quite some time. The ride starts at 4AM, rain or shine, so we figured we might be starting ourselves just a tad later. Yeah, we might be nuts for trying to ride our bikes 250 miles, but we aren't so stupid as to want to start in a lightning storm.
In any case, it didn't matter as the rain stopped by the time we got to Bedford. About 25-30 riders were there for the start.
I do love the early morning starts. Everything is calm and cool, and it looks really neat to be following the string of red lights of the riders ahead. However, we were dropped by the fastest riders after a few miles. No worries - I am the Slow Randonneur, after all.
The forecast was for rain and occasional thunderstorms all day, but we only got rained on a bit in the morning. Then the sun came out and it got quite hot and steamy. There were points in the day where I wished the rain would come back. I think I ended up with a bit of dehydration and overexposure to the sun, so next time I will have to remember to better deal with the changing conditions.
As my faithful readers know, I have been battling a bit of knee pain over the past few weeks. Of course, the ol' knee was talking to me from the beginning, but then a strange thing happened. Somewhere around the 50 mile mark after some long ascents, I realized my knee was no longer hurting. It felt as if there was nothing ever wrong. I am not sure what happened, but I can only think that I was successful in beating my knee into submission.
Another interesting moment came when we were going through Meredith, NH, the halfway point of the ride, I realized that this was the exact same way we drive to go to Lake Winnipesaukee. I also realized that I was very, very far from home.
Overall, this was an excellent ride. I got a little nauseous after the halfway point that never completely left me for the rest of the day/night/morning, but once again I am realizing that these long rides are like a lot of littler rides spliced together. You have ups and downs.
Before completing the 400K, I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to ride the 600K in five weeks due to my knee. Well, I'm throwin' that thought out the window! Super Randonneur, here I come!
From the Randonneurs USA website:
Super Randonneur (rahn doe ner) - A special medal awarded to those randonneurs who successfully complete a challenging series of brevets (200, 300, 400, and 600-kilometers) in a year. A hard-earned honor unto itself and worthy of being any randonneur's goal for the cycling season, the Super Randonneur series of brevets is usually needed to enter a 1200-kilometer event.
Lessons learned
- Pay even more attention to water and food intake: I think the nausea would have been avoidable if I had just eaten and drank a little more.
- Half hour rests at controls are great: Chuck is a great riding partner because he is very concious of how much time off the bike his body needs. I just tend to go and go and then end up paying for it later. Some of the time that you lose at a long control stop can be made up by better and happier riding
- It's better to stick out a problem and see what happens: I was considering not doing this ride because of my knee, at one point. Man, am I glad I didn't do that.
