Brentani’s Cycling Blog

A couple things to catch up on:

Tuesday. Only four of us showed up for the Smack Down (me, aaron, curtis s., and syl) so we decided to mix things up a bit. Instead of the usual route, we went north and did my climbing circuit. I was not terribly surprised, but happy nonetheless, that we were only able to post a time of 58 minutes and change. My most recent time was 54:00 going solo. Aaron is going to try to beat it sometime soon riding solo now that he knows the route. I expect he’ll beat my time pretty easily. We’re pretty close to each other on the climbs, and he’s definitely a faster descender and better time-trialist. But it will be interesting nonetheless. Rundown on the hills: I won Cullen Hill. Aaron, Syl and I finished Wilbur all together, with Curtis just behind. Aaron put in a huge attack at the bottom of Whipple, Curtis clawed him back, with me in tow, I dropped Curtis, Aaron recovered and came out of nowhere to take the hill, followed by Syl after I cracked.

The bit of info that everyone, or at least Khalid, has been waiting for, the verdict on running a force rear derailleur with Campy shifters: no problem. I made the switch 2 nights ago, but didn’t shorten the chain enough. I took the bike into Caster’s to have them shorten the chain and true the new open pro wheel. They were more than a little skeptical, and noted that it shifted “ok” in the lower gears, but the top 3 or so were a little off. When I got home I took the bike for a spin around the block and noted the same thing. not great. Nothing too horrible, but somewhat disappointing all the same. But I wasn’t going to make a final verdict until I had ridden it under real riding conditions. I put it back on the stand and played with the adjustment. This morning I went out and did my Greenville Loop. No problems whatsoever. Shifts perfectly. On the stand, I had a little trouble getting it into the 28, but that might have more to do with the limit stops anyway. Since I didn’t need the 28 out riding, I’m not sure if that’s resolved or not. To answer a Khalid’s other questions about the Force RD, 1. compact crank + 11-28 cassette is right about at the limit of the system’s capacity, so using the Force RD with a compact and a mountain cassette isn’t going to work. moreover, you really couldn’t go any bigger than a 28 without the derailleur jamming into the cassette in the back either. I just barely squeaked out beating my best time for the route, as well.

Equinox race report from Saturday, Aug. 7 is coming…

here are some pictures of Jude’s new bike, as painted by Brian at Circle A! Completely adorable, if I do say so myself. And this was also the test run for the colors for my new bike. And I have to say I’m very happy with the combination. Especially combined with the green Chris King headset and bottom bracket.

In other news, last night’s smack down was a little disappointing. Stayed at the front for the first sprint, but didn’t contest. Second sprint I was well placed and put in a pretty big attack at the start of the hill. I had a sizable gap at the crest, but Aaron caught me at the 150 meter to go mark. He rolled up next to me and slowed down. Not sure what he was doing as asked if he wasn’t contesting it, or what. He sped up a bit and took it. After the line, he said he was waiting so we could drag-race to the line. What he didn’t realize was that I had put everything into getting as much of a gap on the hill as possible, so if he had anything for a sprint he was going to beat me. Tourtellot Hill…I really wanted to win this one, since the only time I’ve lost it all year was to Keith Kelley and there’s no shame in that. I attacked about 1/2 way up the hill, but Aaron had made sure to be latched to my wheel and he brought Syl and Dave Kellogg back with him. No one passed, as I hoped they would, so I waited a bit and jumped again, but once they caught up I was spent. Too bad.

This post is a bit late, but I didn’t have any internet access after leaving Acadia. The last morning there, I headed out with a Garmin course to get me to Day Mountain, a hill I found on the map, which uses the dirt carriage roads. Having caught glimpses of the road from the loop, I was pretty sure they were road bikable but wouldn’t know until I got there. When I did, there was really very little soft dirt/sand or rocks to contend with. The road itself was pretty dusty and bumpy however, but that only presented a little difficulty going downhill. Otherwise, it felt like riding on (relatively) smooth cobblestones. I hadn’t mapped out Day Mountain on brentacol before doing the climb, so I didn’t know what to expect. Not being a public road for driving, I thought there could be some nasty steep sections. It turns out, however, that the gradient is luxuriously consistent, averaging 3.7% the whole way up. The dirt adds a bit to the difficulty, but not much. My brentacol map shows some spikes that I don’t believe. Great views the once you get to the top third. Really fun hill.

And there are also a couple hills on the loop that are a little bit tough, but nothing to compare with Cadillac. Jordon Pond Road, which comes just before Cadillac, so you could conceivably lump it together, is probably the hardest of them:

When I started the ride, I was still feeling crappy from the day before, and was pretty sure I was going to scrap my original plan of going up Cadillac one last time. However, after Day Mountain, my condition gradually improved, so I decided to give Cadillac one more crack before heading home. By half-way up I was really feeling good, and even wondered if I might be setting a new best time. Turns out it was about 20 seconds off my previous best, coming in at 17:50 or so. Still, 4 times up Cadillac in 3 days was pretty fun.

I’m up in Maine for the week, and yesterday the family and I arrived in Bar Harbor for two days. After getting to the hotel at around 3:30, I immediately headed out for a quick ride from the hotel up to the top of Cadillac. Cadillac is the big mountain at Acadia that rises up from sea level to about 1500 feet. Since I started from the hotel on Main Street in downtown Bar Harbor, I probably ascended all but 50 feet of that vertical distance in about 6 miles. The first 2.5 miles are pretty inconsistent, but do have some of the steeper bits of riding. Once you enter the park, there’s a left turn onto the summit road, and from there the road is a pretty monotonous 5-7% all the way to the top. (A very gentle gradient compared to some of the stuff I’ve been doing lately.) Views from the top are incredible, and the wind was pretty intense once you get out of the tree cover.

I wanted to get myself a benchmark course in the Garmin so that I’d have something to work off of for today’s ride. I didn’t particularly have any goal as far as time, primarily because I had had a big lunch of chicken wings, curly fries and rolling rock that were still sitting like a brick in my stomach. I started the timer at the bottom of the access road and stopped it just as I hit the loop at the top. 19:08. Not bad, all things considered. That night, I checked what my buddy Mike’s time had been: 15:40. Yikes. That was going to be hard to beat, even with a nice warmup and no curly fries.

Today, I headed out and did the 20-mile loop around Acadia, ending up at the base of Cadillac again. Cued up my course and started the timer again at the bottom. I started out well. I figured I needed to beat yesterday’s time by almost a minute per mile to have any chance of beating Mike. After the first mile, I had almost 45 seconds in hand, and thought I might have a chance. I felt pretty good the whole way up and cranked out a pretty steady cadence. Unfortunately, the last 2.5 miles were not as much faster as I hoped and I finished with 17:32, a little more than a minute and a half faster than yesterday’s time, but still almost 2 minutes off Mike’s pace.

From there I went back down and rode the loop another time. There are some decent climbs on the park loop as well (which is, btw, some of the nicest riding I’ve ever done). Somewhere on the back side, I caught up to and then passed a local rider on one of the climbs. He caught me on the descent and we chatted a bit. He pulled through and picked up the pace a bit, and I decided I would take it a bit easier, but caught him on the next uphill, just before the turn onto Cadillac. For some reason, I decided I should do it one more time, and the guy I met came along for the ride. Not even 1/2 mile in, I knew I had bit off more than I could chew, or at least chew comfortably. I lost my partner’s wheel and was quickly and firmly stuck in my low gear (34-25) the rest of the way up. I hit the wall pretty hard, but managed to slog it out. I knew from the beginning I wasn’t going to do a good ride up, so I didn’t even bother setting the timer. However, I couldn’t resist looking back at the data when I got back to the hotel and calculating the climb time: just over 26 minutes. Good god. I know I was slow, but that’s embarrassing. Although, if I need to feel better about myself, I can point to the fact that I started the climb at about mile 50 (making this the longest ride I’ve done in a while), and the fact that this is only my second real ride since Kingsley Hill (due to a nasty stomach virus). From there, it was all downhill back to town. Wicked awesome ride all around.

Sunday morning, I got up early and left Manchester for North Adams, intent on finally getting back to do Greylock. Parke was the only one I was able to convince to come. The last time I did it (the south side) was 12 years ago, in 1998. This time I was planning on doing the North side. But first I had a little loop planned to go over to Kingsley Hill Road, reputed to contain the steepest half mile in the country. I didn’t pay too much attention to the terrain on the map I had chosen, and there was a lot of climbing before we even got there. First up was the climb out of North Adams on Route 2. We took a back route to get about halfway up the climb and then did the rest of it. A really nice, steady climb, if you can ignore the traffic, which I didn’t find too troublesome. From there, we descended Whitcomb Hill Road (which will be a great hill for another day, and headed towards Kingsley Hill Road.) The scenery along River Road is incredible, and you begin to feel squeezed by the steep, steep terrain on either side. Especially because of the realization that you’ll soon be taking a left to go up what seems like a cliff wall.

Kingsley Hill is as nasty as everyone says. The first section seems to go on forever. It’s wooded and a little curvy, so you can’t get a great idea of how much further until the gradient lets up. I was doing switchbacks (or snow-plowing, or whatever you want to call it) through a lot of this, but I made it up without stopping. Not sure what happened to Parke, but he was quite a ways back, and eventually I couldn’t even hear his cursing. I had a 34-29 as my low gear, Parke had a 39-27, which is really not sufficient for that kind of hill. After the steep part, it gets easier. But the steep stuff takes so much out of you, you really don’t get to recover until the top. It was also very hot and sunny, so just before the last section of steep (probably 12% or so) I cooled off a bit in some shade. and then went on to the top. Hoping that Parke hadn’t turned around and abandoned me in disgust for subjecting him to such torture, I went back down a ways and found him still cursing. He took a break at about the same point I did, and we rode together back up to the top. I’m not sure if he had to dismount in the steep section or not. From there, we went up Tilda Hill. On Doug’s site, he lists Tilda Hill in combination with Kingsley Hill. The whole thing is about 5%, so I figured Tilda Hill couldn’t be too hard. In fact, there’s a very long flat/downhill section, so you’re fully recovered from Kingsley Hill by the time you hit Tilda, and on its own, it’s actually a pretty tough hill.

Going down Tilda, my bike felt a little wobbly, which I chalked up to the road, which was pretty rough, so I took it easy while Parke sped off on the descent. Then back to the descent down Route 2. Again, Parke took off and I rode conservatively. SNAP! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG. Fuck it. another broken nipple/spoke. and I wasn’t even pedaling. I dismounted, and discovered that i had snapped a spoke  about 2 inches from the hub. The wheel still spun reasonably, so I tried to secure the spoke and kept going. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG. This time I was sure the entire wheel was exploding under me. Turns out, the spoke had just popped loose and was banging around again. this time I bent it sideways and threaded it between the adjacent 4-5 spokes. Seemed extra secure. Rode the rest of the way down without incident. Needless to say, we ditched Greylock, and Parke bought me lunch. Even without Greylock, we did about 5000 feet of climbing (in just 30 miles)…so not a bad day in the saddle.

Another day, another Smack Down. Today’s installment featured Aaron, Mark G., Syl, Kirk, Brendan H., IndyFab Mark, and Curtis S. Kirk put in a monster pull on Greenville Ave. which signaled to me right from the start that he was a much stronger rider than he had been the last time we rode (sometime last year, I think). I’ve ridden with Brendan H. before, but don’t know too much about his riding strengths. I think he’s a cat 3, and a strong sprinter. I stayed out of trouble going up Austin, and opted not to try going for the sprint point right at the top of the hill (I don’t want to get too predictable…) The pace was pretty mellow until about 150 meters to go, at which point things were crowded and I didn’t really want to be involved in a sketchy sprint. The group broke up with Mark G. or Brendan (?) taking the sprint.

Syl and I were in the next group chasing down the fast descent to the next sprint point. Once the risers started, Mark and Brendan had a sizable lead. Aaron and Curtis arrived from behind, and we were all together except Mark headed for the steep section. I was badly boxed in and had to wait around as we caught Brendan. Just as we hit the top of the hill, I finally saw an opening, and saw that Mark was not moving very fast up ahead with another 150 meters of flat to the line. And everyone else in the group seemed to be cooked. I gave it everything I had and went screaming by Mark just before the line. That was a fun victory.

Next sprint, I gave a half-hearted attempt to go around Syl, but Aaron launched another attack simultaneously and I didn’t have the strength to contest it.

Tourtellot Hill. Moderate pace from the start (thanks to the fact that Keith wasn’t here today). I was second wheel behind Syl at the start, which seemed like a good place to be. As he started slowing and looking to get off the front, Aaron came up on the left. He later admitted to intentionally boxing me in. as more accelerations started at the front, I had no way to get up there. In the end, I had to wait for everyone to go by and I was at the back of the pack. Meanwhile, a gap had opened up and Aaron and Syl had 2 or 3 bike lengths on the rest of us. I swung to the left and came by Mark. I had some legs, so I spun it up and flew by everyone. I shocked myself a bit at how well I felt cruising at a ~20mph pace up the hill. I came by Aaron and Syl at full speed and they never had a chance to grab the wheel. At this point I saw the 400m to go. I finally started feeling my legs when I hit the 8-10% kicker right at the end, but was pretty confident everyone else would have some difficulty there too. So, 2 out of 4 sprints again. That seems to be my limit.

I drove out to Western Connecticut today to have another go at the Dudleytown Loop I originally tried at the beginning of the winter. The centerpiece of the ride is Dudleytown, an abandoned and, according to some, haunted town just up from Cornwall Bridge. On the ride, there are three dead-end roads that get close to the town: Dark Entry Road, Dudleytown Road, and Bald Mountain Road. The town itself is off-limits, and the Dark Entry Association monitors it pretty intently to keep ghost hunters out. My interests, however, were much more terrestrial. All three of those hills are nasty little climbs. In addition, my route also included climbs up Swaller Hill Road, Dibble Hill Road, Everest Hill, Great Hill, and Flat Rocks Road. There were also two other smaller hills that I only discovered as I road the course. Total climbing for the day was about a vertical mile in less than 35 horizontal.

1. Swaller Hill Road. First hill up, and it’s a real brute. I parked at a trail head on Route 7, just north of Cornwall Bridge and rode north on 7. Just north of Cornwall, Swaller Hill goes up to the left. Exactly a mile at 11.6%, this is the steepest hill of the day. The gradient is pretty consistent, but it does ramp up to the upper teens at times. This one, more than any other hill of the day, felt like climbing one of the big Vermont climbs (Ascutney or Okemo). The fact that it was *only* a mile wasn’t really much of a consolation, and I found myself already happy that I had put on the 13-29 cassette for the ride. Unfortunately, the road dead-ends (or turns into a closed dirt road that is inappropriate for a road bike) so I had to turn around instead of taking the route I had planned.

2. Dibble Hill Road. If this hill had been the last one of the day, I think there’d be no question that it was the most difficult. For one thing, there’s actually a pretty decent climb up 128 before you even turn onto Dibble. A little up the road, you hit your first steep section, a sustained 15-16%. When I drove the road in the winter, I had remembered a big “wall,” and after that section I was trying to decide if my memory had failed me and it wasn’t as hard as it had looked today, or if there was still another wall coming. There was. Just before the top, you have to negotiate a sustained 20%+ section. Really, really hurts. It’s a little like Jenckes in terms of length, but steeper. Ow.

3. Dudleytown Road. Again, after the first section, I thought maybe this one wasn’t as hard as I remembered it from driving. then it kicks up again. I would not be surprised at all if that 34% is right, although it’s probably calculated on the inside of one of the tight switchbacks. Nasty hill. At the top, the road flattens out and turns to dirt. You can go another 1/2 mile or so before signs turn you back from going into Dudleytown. No signs of pig-demons, but there were some creepy looking trees.

4. Everest Hill Road. Not much to say about this. The opening of the hill is very steep, but thankfully not too long.

5. Great Hill Road. This was one of the few hills of the day that wasn’t steep enough to keep me from getting a decent rhythm. Not too much to say about it, but it’s a nice hill.

6. unscheduled hill, Seeley Road. Kind of like a Rhode Island hill…pretty easy.

7. Flat Rocks Road. This was supposed to be the easy, gradual climb. And it is, except that it’s actually dirt. So it is quite a bit more difficult than it would have been had it been paved. Still though, not too hard.

8. Bald Mountain Road. I had done this one before, so I knew it hurt. But this time I turned onto it coming down Warren Hill Road. It’s a tough turn because it’s probably about 150 degrees, coupled with a change from about a 7% descent to a 15-20% climb. I had thankfully gotten in the little ring, but I was still over-geared. The first .3 miles is a relentless 14%. After all of the other hills, I was really starting to feel it on this one. I think I may have seen some of the Dudleytown ghosts. [cue Zak Bagans impression] Whoa! Bro, just as I was getting to the top, I totally got a stinging in my eyes. And then when I stopped at the top, I started feeling a bit dizzy and disoriented. Dude.

9. Dark Entry Road. I was cooked by the time I hit this one. I got up to just before the steep kicker right at the top, but I had to stop. To punish myself, I took the steepest line through the final switchback, and watched my Garmin top off at 27%!

All in all, one of the best routes I’ve done in my life. Hard, beautiful, not much traffic. All I need to do is find an alternative to going up Swaller Hill and turning around. Three dead-ends is ok, especially when they all share the theme of getting as close as possible to the paranormal, but the fourth was a bit much. I’ll see what I can do to fix that part, but the rest was completely phenomenal, and Swaller Hill was really a nice enough hill that I’m definitely glad to have done it once.

First things first. I got the new Garmin Edge 500 for my new bike, but have it early so I can try it out on the road bike. So far, I like. I used the course function today and it saved my skin several times since many of the roads up here (in Saratoga Springs) aren’t marked a few were dead-ends and I had to find alternate routes to get where I was going. Today I was following the course most of the time, so I didn’t watch the gradient too carefully. Anyway, now on to the ride itself.

The main destination on the ride was Spruce Mountain, a firetower road about 10 miles northwest of Saratoga Springs. Got there with no problem. Doing the hill? Not so much. I didn’t even try. Technically, this road is closed to the public, and there is a gate. I was fortunate enough to find a local outside his house at the bottom and asked how seriously I should take the sign. He said that a few of the people who had property at the bottom don’t really like people using the roads, but that otherwise no one would really mind. Also, ATV vehicles use it a lot and, as he said, a bike would be much less disruptive. The only caution he gave was to avoid hunting season. However, the road is not doable on a road bike. I didn’t even make an attempt, but from what you can see at the bottom, there are large ruts, loose dirt and gravel, and an immediate steep switchback. On a road bike, you’d probably be walking within the first 100 meters. I’d guess that a cross bike with 1:1 gearing would probably clear this thing. If and when I’m up here again, I’ll have just such an animal.

Next stop was Plank road, which was supposed to go up to Desolation Lake. Following the directions I had written down and put on the Garmin (from veloroutes), I was going to take Ridge road down to Plank. I got to Ridge, only to discover a tiny gated road with very loose gravel. Just as I turned around to find another route, I heard a woman at the house yell “what? Not doing the hill??” So I turned around. Turns out just up ahead on the dead-end road was a short but steep hill. She gave me directions on how to get back down to Plank. The road labeled as “Ridge” on google maps has apparently been abandoned since the 30s.

In the end, it was good that I did go that way, because had I taken the non-existent road, I would have hit Plank more than half-way up the hill. Plank, however, turns out to also be a dead-end. However, it is pretty long and has some very steep sections, although I think that last little dip is an error in the elevation data. The top turns into a dirt road, which might have been passable to get over to Lake Desolation (the top of the next hill), but there were a bunch of nuts on ATVs and it didn’t seem like a big deal to turn around and go back down Plank since I was just going to do a turn around to go back up Lake Desolation when I got there.

I found Lake Desolation without much trouble, mostly thanks to the Garmin. This is a tough hill. Nicely paved. Some steep sections. According to Garmin, there were some long stretches of 10-12%. I was cooked by the top. The fact that I had about 3 hours of sleep the night before might have had something to do with it.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I had intended to drive out to Western Connecticut while spending the weekend in Manchester and hit a few hills I had heard about in the Northwestern corner. However, I had a mild cold, my toddler had a mild cold and was having some erratic sleep and my wife was having a full on “man cold,” so I found sitting on the couch and eating Pho to be much more attractive options. While I was on the couch I did manage to find some more hills in the area, which got me even more excited about going out this weekend. There had been some discussion of the “meanest mile” in Connecticut on Doug’s recent post about the meanest in MA. The most emphatic post from fredzilla said that Dibble Hill was the meanest. Based on my calculations I was skeptical. Valley Falls/Hatch Hill, though not quite a mile averages a significantly steeper grade and scores 383 vs. Dibble Hill’s 351. Swaller Hill in the same area averages 11.6% (equal to Hatch Hill) for exactly a mile (BRENTACOL: 405) and Great Hill Road, which averages 9.7% nets a BRENTACOL of 416. This means that Swaller Hill is the steepest mile in CT, but as we all know, steepest does not equal hardest. And Great Hill would be the “hardest” according to BRENTACOL rating, but one never knows if the rating/gradient map is accurate until you see the hill in person.

Last weekend, another family discussion found me two more hills to try, which then led me to find a couple more, including Swaller and Great Hill. My brother-in-law is a little obsessed with haunted places and was discussing an abandoned (and off-limits) ghost town in CT named Dudleytown. Some suggest the town’s demise was hastened by pig demons and that the residents went mad, died, etc. Wikipedia is much more sober, but I was intrigued nonetheless. Ghosts or not, abandoned towns and roads are always a draw for me. Looking at the map, the road that gets you closest to the settlement is the sinister sounding Dark Entry Road, and what do you know? It’s a hill, and a pretty decent one it seems. Google maps also showed a road going up Bald Mountain, which looked suspiciously like it might be dirt, as did the Eastern approach, Dudleytown Road. Given that the weather forecast was good for this weekend, and Western CT gets considerably more snow than the rest of the state, I figured this weekend was my last chance until the spring thaw.

Unfortunately, the forecast turned to rain Saturday, which then became snow. Shit. Hoping it would thaw quickly (the roads were already clear in Manchester by 9:00) I decided to head out there anyway. Roads were decent most of the way and I thought I might just sneak in a decent ride. But as I neared Cornwall, the road conditions got much worse. I passed Dibble Hill, and it looked pretty snowy, so I thought I’d check it out in the car and then ride it if it wasn’t too horrible. It was quickly apparent I wasn’t riding Dibble Hill today. When I was almost near the top, I saw a wall I was not expecting, and wasn’t even sure the car would make it up with the snow so I turned around before the steep stuff started. The 25% on the gradient map is for real. The case for Dibble Hill as hardest in CT was improving.

My route was supposed to start just up the road at route 7. I drove up Route 7 to Swaller Hill. The conditions were better on that hill, but still pretty messy. That road seems easier than Dibble Hill Road, but it’s of course impossible to tell. Thinking my day was over, I figured I should at least drive down to Dark Entry and see if I could find some pig demons. By the time I hit Cornwall Bridge, the roads were pretty good, and when I drove by Dark Entry, I was surprised to find it was clear, at least at the bottom. I parked, and rode up it. That’s a nasty little climb. According to BRENTACOL it is slightly harder than Blue Hill and slightly shorter. I agree. It’s gradient is very inconsistent and there are some small sections of really steep (probably 20% or so) that really hurt. I wanted to shift into the 24, but I couldn’t get the chain to drop down, so I was mashing in 36-26.

From there I rode up Warren Hill Road, which is the biggest hill in terms of elevation gain in the area (894 feet). Nice hill, with some steep sections. On the way back down, I turned up Bald hill and was pleasantly surprised to find it was paved all the way to the top. And that one is real kicker as well. Combining Bald Hill (which is 1/2 mile long) with the first section of Warren Hill and it might be in the conversation for meanest mile in CT. I was happy to call it a day and drive to check out the other hills.

• Dudleytown Road: Over on the other side, I drove up Dudleytown Road. This one seems like a really nasty hill, and approaches the abandoned Dudleytown from the east. Very pretty and narrow, but paved. The pavement ends at or near the top, which is where I turned around. It didn’t look like there was much more up left at that point. Veloroutes data is horribly inaccurate so don’t pay attention to the gradients or the BRENTACOL rating, but you can take a look at the map, if you like here.
• Great Hill Road: Not as hard as BRENTACOL says, because that section of 23% and 19% is pretty definitely bogus. Still nothing to scoff at.

I’ll be back in the spring.

Mike and I went out and did a new loop this morning. Really hard loop. I vote it the hardest 50 miles in RI. I suppose you could jimmy a few extra hills into the loop, but this is really quite sufficient. It includes three of the hardest hills, excluding the East Side hills. The hills, in order of appearance are: 1. Smithfield/Ridge Road, 2. Iron Mine Hill, 3. Manville Hill, 4. West Wrenthem, 5. Tower Hill, 6. Mt. St. Charles, 7. Woonsocket HIll, 8. Burlingame, 9. Mountaindale, 10. Pine Hill. Mike got the better of everything except Tower Hill. For that one, I attacked in one of the downhill/flat sections and gapped Mike before the last uphill section. A little bit slimy, but I’ll take it.


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And then, at the top of Woonsocket Hill, I finally remembered to look for the road up to the summit. Brentwood is a little subdivision that gets almost there (with a nasty bit of 20% gradient), but I had noticed that there was another unnamed road on google maps. The verdict is: not possible on a road bike. there’s a layer of soft dusty sand, covered with golfball sized gravel. Here I am giving it a try. I’ll try to get my cyclocross bike back in working order and try it again.