Brentani’s Cycling Blog

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.

I haven’t checked in in a while, so there’ll be a lot of somewhat unrelated things in this post. First of all, I did Ascutney back on July 18, and posted a report here. The next day, I drove up and did a loop around Lincoln Gap and App Gap. For Ascutney, I (with help from Brian, of course) set up the Circle A as a single front chainring of 26. Matched that with a 13-29 in the back. The gears felt just about right. I spun out on the brief down-hill/flat section at mile 2.5, but otherwise was fine. I spent a lot of time in the 26/29, but never felt like I wanted to downshift, and was able to shift up and down pretty smoothly as the pitch changed. (Contrast that w/ okemo where I was firmly stuck in the 34/29 from bottom to top.) For Lincoln, I of course needed some bigger gears (for the flat and descents), but also needed the low gears. I used the Gazelle for that, which, if you don’t remember, has a compact triple (46-36-24, w/ a 13-26 in the back). The 46/13 is a little easier to spin out on flats than you might want, but otherwise the gearing was also pretty good.

Ascutney Setup

Lincoln Gap…starts out with a short steep section. Nothing to worry about. It levels off and gives you some extended false flats, which eventually become dirt. When the pavement returns, that’s when the fun starts. The transition from 36 to 24 is pretty hairy, so I stopped and shifted into the 24 right at that point, since I didn’t want to mess with it once the gradients really picked up. The next section is very steep, probably mid-teens. At a certain point, you turn a corner and see an immense section of over 20%. That part is going to hurt anyone, probably no matter what gears you bring. I did it in the 24/26. Once you get up that and turn the corner, it “eases up” to about 18%. It was at this point that I stopped for a breather. I couldn’t tell what would happen around the next corner, and the Gazelle doesn’t have a computer, so I didn’t know how far I had gone. Turns out if I had just perservered another little bit, I would have been at the top. Oh  well.

Next Item: Carrie went to a wedding a month or so back, and google maps inexplicably sent her on some back road on her way up to Burriville. Turns out it was a hill, and she asked if I had done it, which I had not. I went out on tuesday to give it a try. The road in question is Brayton, and is right near Burlingame. Nothing too difficult, but definitely worth knowing about. There’s another road (Rogler Farm) that also goes up to the same point. Here they are:

Or perhaps I should say “53:45, bitches.” That’s right, I beat my previous best time on the hill climbing circuit by almost two minutes. And I beat the time I posted back in April by a full 5 minutes. Factor in a fair amount of rain today, which had me braking most of the way down 123, and I could have cut that down by at least another 15 seconds. Overall, I didn’t really feel like I was pushing that hard, at least not until Wipple. I tried to moderate my pace as much as possible on Cullen Hill and Wilbur. That is, I tried to ride a high but steady tempo from top to bottom, and avoid going too hard too soon. It seemed to help. As usual, I didn’t look at my time until sometime in the last fast section approaching Wipple. When I saw 48 minutes and change, I was pretty sure I was going to set a new best time. No point in conserving energy for Wipple at that point. I rode as hard as possible before hitting the climb. And there, I pushed myself way into the red, but I knew it’d be over in a matter of a minute or two…hit the top of the climb and watched the clock roll over 53:45. I was thinking my previous best was 54-something, but turns out it was 55:34, so I’m feeling even better about my form.

Add to that, I went back to Mount Tom again over the weekend, and this time managed to ride it from top to bottom without stopping. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Now if only I could ride back down w/o stopping (for the brakes to cool off). 10 days left to Ascutney.