Brentani’s Cycling Blog

That’s exactly a minute faster than my previous best time for the hill climbing circuit (the old one, not the expanded one with Capron, Burlingame, etc.) Of course that’s not the whole story: the other time I was holding back on the first lap in preparation to give it everything on the second lap, which I never did, instead opting to do the east side hill loop. But today’s time could have been much better if I hadn’t had abnormally bad luck making some of my turns – I lost close to a minute waiting to turn onto Great Road from 123, another 30 seconds or so waiting for the light at 116 and probably a minute waiting to cross RT 7 on Harris. I can’t say for sure that I didn’t lose time in those spots (or other spots) on my previous runs, but today definitely seemed worse than normal.

doing the loop with an eye to overall time is a bit of a weird experience for me. If I ride at my own pace, I tend to take it easy on the flats and descents and punch it on the hills. Or, if I ride it with others, I try to duck out of the wind and recover as much as possible so that I can have as much energy as possible for the climbs. Today, I wanted to put down as good a time as possible in those in-between sections to allow myself a buffer in my average speed when I hit the climbs. The end result was that I climbed all of the climbs a bit slower than I would under other circumstances. The only exceptions were the two easy climbs (not even rated on my hills page) on Dexter Rock and 116. I usually shift into the little ring for those, but today I was able to power through them in the big ring. The question of course is whether I would have done better by arriving at the climbs with a slightly lower average speed but better legs to sprint up the hills? I’d also be very curious to see how a different type of rider would handle the same course. My guess is that even though there’s a lot of climbing, Gewilli would very easily ride the non-climbing and descending parts quick enough to post a much better time for the circuit.

OK, here’s the deal. With this new baby, I can only get out for a regular ride every so often. Once Carrie goes back to work, Thursdays will be good, since Grandma Best will be baby-sitting that day. I really want to get a regular climbing workout started for the Brown/Refunds Now group. I think that picking a regular day to have a hill-ride is the way to go. Unfortunately, Thursdays don’t seem to be very good, which leaves the weekends. The Brown Tim Horton’s ride is a saturday morning tradition, so I don’t want to step on that…which leaves sunday mornings. The advantage to Sundays is that we can also yell “c’est dimanche!!” at rude cars a la my old riding companion Samir Kelada (Hey samir, if you’re googling yourself, why not drop me a line?)  Time will likely be 9:00 AM, though I’ll still have to negotiate that with Carrie.

Now, onto more specifics. I want this to be something fun that actually encourages people to come out for a nice competitive and enjoyable ride. Something like the old “euro-tuesdays” I used to do back in Ann Arbor. (But sadly, being older, wiser, and a father…no more riding sans helmet.) I’ve picked out a standard route for the ride, which is essentially the hill climbing circuit (but in the revised version that includes Cullen Hill) expanded to include Capron, Burlingame, and Mountaindale. Here’s the new veloroutes map. The hills, in order of appearance are: Limerock, Cullen Hill, Wilbur, Capron, Burlingame, Mountaindale and Whipple. What will make this ride fun is that I will be keeping track of KOM points throughout the year. (I think that WIlbur, Burlingame, and Cullen will all be worth 20 pts for a win, Whipple, Capron, and Mountaindale 15, and Limerock 10.) I’ll also assign similar values to other climbs in the area (Jenckes 40, Bowen 50, Blue Hill 45), so there will also be other possible routes, with other possible climb combinations. And on days we’re feeling particularly ambitious, there will be field trips up to Monadnock, Wachusset, Mount Tom and other nasty New England climbs. the specifics still need to be ironed out, but I think this should be fun. And unless you hear otherwise, the first hill ride is on for this sunday at 9:00!

It had been at least 2 weeks since my last ride, but I finally made it out today for a couple hours riding east of Providence. I don’t usually go that way, but I was riding with Joey and another local rider who showed up for the ride I announced. We ended up on Hillside Ave. Considering that the rest of the terrain east of the Henderson Bridge is pancake flat, Hillside is a veritable mountain. It has two sections of relatively steep gradient. The veloroutes elevation data is completely inaccurate, so there’s no need to post the gradient map. In any case, I was happy that I still had my climbing legs in spite of the 2 week hiatus. On the first section, I kept up a decent pace and gradually winded it up until my two riding partners were both off the back. Over the top I shifted into the big ring and kept the pace high, but not too high. Joey put in a valiant effort to bridge the gap, which he did. He caught me just before the next section of hill, and attacked in his big ring. Unfortunately for him, I was feeling well-recovered from the first climb and easily jumped on his wheel, and as soon as he saw that the hill went on a little longer than he expected I kept my big gear turning to the top of the climb and dropped him again. So all in all, I’m still feeling ok about my form even though I haven’t ridden in a while. I just need to be sure to work riding into my schedule one way or another, or I’ll end up resenting the little peanut. (actually I don’t think that’s possible, he’s just so freaking cute…)

now for some gewilli-esque rambling…

My mother-in-law also alerted me to a new large hill near their house in Manchester, CT, so I may try to ride that when we go there this weekend…

Jamestown is about 1 month away…finishing in the pack seems like a healthy goal…

…and even though i said that Mount Tom was a once in a lifetime hill, I’m already feeling the itch to go hit it again. c’mon, someone has to want to do it with me…?