However, since the bridge does not seem like it will be fixed any time soon, I needed to come up with a new route to use as a benchmark. I have my Greenville Loop, but it’s not really conducive to an all-out effort because it starts from my house, without much warm up. In the end, I managed to find a route that is very similar to the old one in terms of distance and terrain. Since my meeting this morning was cancelled, I decided to go out and give it a crack, even though it is hot as balls out there. It starts and ends at the exact same place, the top of Whipple. Instead of turning on Limerock, however, you continue up Ridge to Capron. From there, you head up 104 to Brayton Road. Do a quick loop up Brayton and back down Rogler Farm and then cut over to Burlingame. I added a quick loop on some mostly flat roads down Tarklin and back to Mann School, and then down Swan. Then up Walter Carey, down Mountaindale and back to Whipple. The tough hills are, in order of appearance (brentacol ratings in parenthases): Capron (139), Brayton (94), Burlingame (181), Walter Carey (88), Whipple (102). The garmin puts total climbing about 100 feet more than the old circuit, in exactly the same distance, 17.1 miles.

Here’s a google map.

In the end, I’d say this route is harder than the original. The hills all rate a bit higher. Burlingame is similar to Wilbur, but harder. Capron rates pretty highly at 139, though it doesn’t really seem that much harder than something like Cullen. Brayton is steep, but short. Walter Carey is deceptively hard. I think the 88 is lower than it would be if the map didn’t average out some of the steep gradients. The gradient is very inconsistent the whole way up and there are two (very short sections) that I would peg at just over 20%, but they really hurt, especially because they come so late in the ride. It’s also a much nicer ride, because it eliminates all the difficult road crossings. It also gets rid of the scary descent down Breakneck Hill. The descents on the new route are safer and faster, which is a big bonus. Today’s finishing time was 58:46 or 17.4 mph. I expect to beat that by quite a bit next time I try it, when I know the course, and it’s not so hot. I really wasn’t pushing that hard most of the time. Bringing the time down to the 53 range will almost certainly be more difficult than it was on the previous loop, and I expect even Keith to have difficulty posting a sub-50 time, but he’ll probably prove me wrong.

But all the same, I like what this says about the strength of my previous solo runs. Especially because we picked up almost all of the advantage before we hit Cullen Hill Road. At the base of Cullen, we had somewhere in the order of 1:30-1:45 over the 54:00 minute run, and that’s almost exactly where we finished. We managed to bring it up over 2:00 minutes on the descent after Wilbur Hill, but lost most of that when we were stopped at the light at 116. When we turned onto 116, I took a long pull, and when I moved over to let Aaron take over, I realized he wasn’t on my wheel. He had had a chain issue just after the turn and was fighting to get back. I slowed up a little until he was back on my wheel and managed a pretty hard pull up the small hill on 116. I usually use the little ring for that hill, but today cranked it out in the big ring. After that, we went down Harris. Aaron took one pull, and then I went as fast as I could for the second part of the descent, back to Route 7. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I descended that. We then had a little over 2:00 minutes advantage again. On the final stretch, Aaron took the lead, telling me to go all out on Whipple, and not to wait for him. Unfortunately, we were already almost there, but Aaron had still managed to cook himself, so I was on my own for all of Whipple. I apparently climbed it slower than I had my previous time, because the advantage dipped back to only 1:45 or so by the top. Aaron finished a few seconds back.

A fun experiment in any case. Here’s the Garmin Readout.

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…

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.

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 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.

So instead, I think I will take the plunge and get myself a new Force or Rival rear derailleur, which, if one believes Leonard Zinn, will work fine with Campy shifters. The advantages to going this route are, as I see it:

• I can run my new Ultegra/Open Pro wheels on either of my new bikes
• If/when I get a set of race (climbing) wheels somewhere down the road, that can also be used on either bike. (that would mean I’d have one bomb-proof set for cross, training, riding on dirt roads, etc, and then a second set for hillclimb races, but because I plan on using both bikes (depending on the exact race characteristics) for hillclimbs, I’d want to be able to use the race wheels on either bike, not just the cross bike.
• and most importantly, I don’t have to go out and buy a wheelset immediately, since the ultegra/open pro is sitting at Circle A. And since I can buy them from Circle A individually, I could always grab a second rear wheel so that I don’t have to swap them continually when I get the new bike.

The biggest disadvantage is that I can’t use any of the wheels from these bikes on the gazelle, but that’s not such a big deal anyway, since I never once used the Ritchey’s on the Gazelle. I’ll probably ride the chorus hub until it dies and then figure out what to do for a wheel on the Gazelle. Maybe just pick up an old Mirage hub (which seem to be dirt cheap on ebay) and rebuild the wheel.

That also means I’ll be left with a medium cage chorus rear derailleur, and 2 cassettes (11-25 and 13-29) that I won’t really need any more, but are probably not worth enough to get much money out of…I may try to upgrade the Gazelle to 10 speed at some point, since all I’d need are the shifters, but those things ain’t cheap, even veloce.

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.

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.

The biggest factor, I think, was a bungled warmup. I rode down the course from the “North Pole” theme park where my car was (about 2 miles) and toodled around for a bit. Figuring I wanted a decent warmup, and remembering (correctly) that I had forgotten to lock the car, I decided to get a feel for the hill by riding back up to the car. I kept an easy and sustainable pace, and was pleasantly surprised to see that 8 mph wasn’t very difficult to keep up. Got to the car, locked, went back down. People were lining up, so rather than be the jackass who’s race prep is too important to hang out in the group, I just lined up too, but that meant I was standing still for upwards of 30 minutes. From the gun my legs were burning. And the same spot where I had been easily keeping up 8 mph suddenly seemed very hard at the same pace. My average was probably 9.4 mph during the first 2 miles, and it steadily dropped for the rest of the climb. Never really felt like I was able to get much momentum or power or even really the motivation to get things rolling.

That said, I did very much enjoy the climb. The first 3 miles up to the toll both are a little boring, but the last 5 up to the summit are incredible. The finish, in particular is dramatic. The road is almost dead straight until just before the top, where you get two swoopy switcback finally arriving at the Castle.

Following the race, I navigated NY backroads, a ferry, and VT backroads to get to teammate jerry’s house outside of Burlington. The next morning, we rode around some of his favorite hills, ending up back at Bolton Notch, a complete spanker of a hill, right by his house. Last year he told me that it was “almost as steep as Lincoln Gap” and at first I just assumed that this was the usual “my driveway is the steepest hill on the planet” hyperbole you find all over the internet. Turns out he’s not far off. The first 1 KM averages almost 17%! It’s quite similar to Mount Tom. There are two immense walls of 20%, punctuated by a couple spots to recover, if only slightly. There are also some dirt/gravel sections to contend with. What makes it easier than Mount Tom, is that Mount Tom’s sections of 20+% are both longer, and happen a bit later in the hill. The first section on Bolton Notch is sprintable, and you can get up it with a little determination. After the short recovery section, the next section on Bolton Notch is really, really, nasty, but once you get to the top of that, you’re done with the really evil stuff and you can roll it up to the top. On Mount Tom, just as you finish one huge slog, you’re hit with another one just as bad, and that second one is much more demoralizing. Jerry had bid me farewell at the bottom saying he’d just go up for a bit and turn around, but he was cranking up the hill not too far behind me when I got to the top.