JimK:  Well, I did it. I managed to get the metric. I actually got a little extra, due to the fact that I missed a couple of turns here and there and had to backtrack. I rode a total of 64.75 miles.  I finished in five hours and nineteen minutes of actual riding, with another two hours minutes of not moving at all interspersed in there. Rest stops, stopping to gasp for air, stopping to re-apply butt lube, stopping to refill water, stopping because I thought I was going to die and maybe I should call for the sag wagon and just quit this stupid shit right now…you know, some stops.

Maybe I should just start at the beginning.  First of all, the Southern Connecticut Cycling Club is the most disorganized club ever. I joined them over a month ago now, and I have yet to hear word one from ANYONE about group rides, what membership gets me…nothing. Nada. Zip. I’ve sent so many emails my next move is to physically track one of them down and shake them until something useful pops out of their mouth.  So…you know…know this about the SCCC. Frigging useless.

I get there and there is no indication of where I should go, where I should park, nothing.  I wandered around to the back of the school to find the registration table tucked neatly away in the back. Got a number - at least my registration was processed, right? They just handed me the number and a cue sheet and said “Enjoy your ride.” I guess that’s how organized rides work. So I walked away and went off in search of someone to help pin it on me. A nice couple parked next to me pinned me up. I was number 163.

There was no groups of people, no way to connect with other riders, nothing. There were clearly groups of people who knew each other, but no one - not the other riders, not the organizers - no one made any effort to include new people in any way. I’m not exactly Mr. “Hi, I’m going to join your social circle now” in regular life. So I just geared up, got the bike all situated and rode off.

Immediately I got lost. Sorta. I missed the very first turn! I went a quarter mile down the road before I realized it.

I also noticed something very, very different from the roads I usually ride. Mother. Fucking. CHIPSEAL. Oh how I hate chipseal. It was like riding a paint mixer. My bike is aluminum, but it has a composite fork with some carbon in it and a carbon seat post to help dampen the harsh buzz of rough roads. 99.9% of the time it’s a pretty smooth ride. But the town of Madison, and apparently every other town we went through, use the cheapest, roughest chipseal they can get on EVERY FRIGGING ROAD.

Not too many hills here, more than I was used to but I did okay. I got dropped (passed) by nearly everyone, but I still managed to average about 13 miles an hour which made me happy. What was NOT happy was my crotch. It was maybe the muggiest, most oppressively humid day I have every experienced outside of walking through New Orleans.  Bad crotch mojo! Also, the roads were still very wet from the night/morning rain. But…I was my typical Fred self, and I had my clip-on fender on the back. Not like the decked-out model chick I followed for about a mile…couldn’t make out the bike, but it was some kind of carbon, I could see that much. Perfect, crisp white Campagnolo bib shorts, matching sleeveless jersey, hair just so, nails done…big mud stripe up her back.  All I could think was Thank God I don’t care of other people laugh at my fender. This is miserable enough without the stripe aggravating me all day. So onward over the chipseal I rode.

There were a couple of minor 1-1.5% grades that went up, leveled then up again. a few miles later we got one long descent, and that was awesome. I even countersteered twice and carved a corner like nobody’s business. I was all “Fuck yeah, I am like Contador up in this bitch!” Except that he weighs about half of me and can, you know, hit these speeds going up a hill. Still…descending is amazing fun.

By the first rest stop I felt like a 250 pound vibrator. That someone had hooked up to a car battery.  Jasmine was also pretty tired, so I let her rest for a few minutes:

Fun little side story here: This is my first group ride. I have no fucking idea what to do, what the etiquette is, etc. No one of course took a microsecond to give new riders any information what-so-fucking-ever, so I was just hanging back, watching what other people did and kind of emulating that. So I get in line for the water, but I brought both of my empty bottles. WELL!  Apparently I am disturbing Mr. Big Professional Roadie Guy behind me. As I fill one and switch to the second, he groans “Oh you gotta be kidding me.” I assume he is not talking to me. 16 - SIXTEEN - seconds later my bottle is full and he gives a big dramatic sigh. Now I think “Is he talking to me?” I turn around and ask him if he’s talking to me.

He is. “Do you have to fill both of them now?”

“What?”

“You can’t wait for everyone to get theirs and come back for the second one?”

I pause. Is this a thing?, I think. “Am I supposed to fill one, then rotate to the back of the line? Is this like a water station paceline or something?” Then I realize that even if it is a thing, this guy is an asshole for making a huge deal about 16 seconds of time. So I stand up, get my “fuck you” face on and say “You know, this is my first group ride, so if I did something wrong I don’t know it. You could have just said “Hey buddy, it’s common courtesy to fill the bottle one at a time until everyone gets a turn” instead of being the typical aggro roadie asshole about it.”

Silence. Him. Me. The people around us. He looks down and says nothing. I walk back to my bike and my mood gets that much darker.  I get on the bike and go. The markings on the road are confusing…not just to me, a lot of others were confused by this intersection.  Two of the paths - the 50 and the 62 mile - overlapped here, and then we went on a loop for the 62 mile course and end up right back at the same intersection, but going in another direction. It was throwing a lot of people off, because of the way it was marked out on the road itself. So I rode away for about a third of a mile, convinced myself I was in the wrong place, went back, asked someone at the table and found out I was in the right place all along. And so I went back and plugged onward.

At this point the course changes. It’s about an 11 mile loop to get back around to the rest stop/intersection again, and easily 95% of it is climbing. There is one road, Haddam Quarter Road, that they even deigned to warn us about. But the smarmy tone on the cue sheet didn’t make me fall in love with the ride organizers at all…

Note: Haddam Quarter Road is the worst climb on this route.. However, there’s less than 1/2 mile of serious climbing so it can be walked.

That’s from the official cue sheet. In another flyer I read, it said that this wasn’t anything a “serious cyclist” would call a difficult climb.  Oh. Well thanks for the insult there, jackass. You are aware this is a god-damned charity ride, right?

Anyway, what they don’t tell about are the three hills before Haddam, and then the 94 hills after the big one on Haddam, and how the descents are like, 1/16th mile straight down but two miles back up the next one, and rinse and repeat. I fucking got right off the bike halfway up Haddam Quarter Road and walked that shit. I met a guy halfway up who was rolling forward at 3.5 miles an hour. I was walking at 3 mph. We chatted at the top…he has been doing this ride for three years and he was praying this hill was not included this year. This was the first time he’s ever made it up without walking. “I hate this hill. It makes the rest of the ride absolutely miserable. I wish they would route around it. This is for charity, not the Tour de France!”

Yeah…I hear ya, buddy. And you ain’t alone. Behind us came two guys kitted in full Livestrong kit, riding matching Trek Madones in white black & yellow. *They* got off and walked the last 300 yards! Skinny, fit guys who, although it’s hard to tell just by looking, looked like hardcore roadies who should have eaten this hill. Behind them were a small group of people walking it as well.

Everyone passed me on the next hill which, while not as steep, was pretty bad. Those were the last people on bikes I saw for the next 30 miles. I chugged along, averaging about 6-8 miles an hour, staying in the granny ring almost exclusively. By this point I think I had whispered, shouted, screamed and sobbed “TOUGHEN UP, PRINCESS” like, 2378 times. I was now moving on to cursing.I did manage at some point to look up and notice the picturesque country road I was on:

Made it back. 30 miles down. Hit the rest stop again. Ate more food. Re-lubed the butt/thigh area, which was screaming for vengeance at this point. And now: Suffering.

The next segment of the ride was just nothing but hills. Long, gradual hills that sucked the God-damned life out of me. I never made it about 10mph at ALL unless I was going down hill. And that rarely happened. I began to curse CONSTANTLY. I would climb a hill, hit a false flat, see another hill coming around the bend and just scream things like “JESUS MOTHERFUCKING GOD-DAMNED SONOFABITCHING FUCKING CHRIST FUCK FUCK FUCK THESE MOTHERFUCKERS.” Torrents of cursing were pouring out of me. I cannot count the number of times I saw another hill and just yelled “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” at the top of my lungs. By this point I was utterly alone. had been since the mid-point of the last segment. The more I talked to myself the more I thought it was okay to talk to myself, and I certainly wasn’t embarrassed by the presence of any other riders now was I? I was pretty sure I was going to be the last rider to roll in back at the finish. I was hot, in pain, unable to climb at anything other than a fast walking pace. I was demoralized by each and every hill that I saw.

I considered quitting. I considered crying, actually.  Something really odd and chemical was happening in my brain. I was angry and frustrated and tired and I felt like the organizers had done this to me personally. I literally almost cried when i saw the fact that I was at mile 39 and the last hill just seemed to go up and up and go on forever. I though at this point that if I could just make it to the 41-mile rest stop, Maybe 41 miles would be fine and I could call for the sag wagon to take me back to the school.

I chugged up the hill. At some point I actually got angry at Lance Armstrong. Actually honest-to-God angry.  I’ll explain. I looked down at the computer and saw that I was doing 6.5 miles per hour. I thought in my head “Team Astana could go up this hill at 30 miles an hour. Fuck those guys. Just fuck them. That is such bullshit. Those guys are assholes.”

No, that doesn’t make a lick of sense…but I wasn’t really rational at this point. I wasn’t bonked - meaning I had eaten enough food and taken in enough water, I wasn’t out of energy per se - but I simply am currently unable to climb hills. I am dragging too much weight (in my fat ass!) and my legs are not strong enough. YET. Anyway…I wasn’t out of energy. I was just so completely frustrated, and the lack of communication from the ride organizers, the fact that they laid out a tough course, the somewhat smarmy tone of how they described it…it was all getting to me.

My mood shifted as I got closer to the top. I was slowing down, but still moving forward. Maybe the stupidity of getting mad at Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador shook something loose in my head, I dunno. But as I approached the 41 mile rest stop, I felt better.

Until the guy at the top told me what i just did.

“That’s a hell of a climb, huh?”

“Yeah. I feel a little like I might die.”

“Lemme top off your water for you. Got any other empties?” I hand him two. He fills them for me. “You should eat a banana. Or I could make you some peanut butter & jelly.”

I take a banana. I thank him.  Then he drops it on me.

“So…five and a half miles straight up with no descent. Wore you out, huh?”

I blink. I stare. I turn it over in my head. Did he just say that was 5.5 miles on non-stop climbing? So I ask him.

“Yup. just about 5.6 or 7 actually.  Pretty tough in this heat!”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Did I just climb over five and a half miles and some-odd hundred feet up? Well that was something!

Looking at the map it’s more like 3 miles of nothing bit climbing.

Now I realize that 4% grades topping out at 600 feet are nothing to most people who ride. But I just started this whole “riding for real” business on May 11th. Two months before this event. This, for me, is like climbing Ventoux. (Which of course I found out this morning that someone I know through someone else just did. That dude is a bad ass!)

At least now I got to go down for awhile! The last 20 miles involved *some* rolling hills but it was a lot of descending, which was nice. I had called Donna back at mile 30 and told her to meet me at the school…I assumed there was a thing, the organizers had talked about a meal and made it sound like some sort of party-type situation. So Donna was going to meet me there. Unfortunately I got back long before I expected to. Going down hill doesn’t take nearly as long! I think I averaged somewhere around 20 miles an hour on miles 42-55-ish, that went pretty quickly. Then I got to the coastal section and saw my first rider in hours! He was just finishing the 100 mile course. So…yeah.  Miles 56-58 were scenic:

...but windy as hell. I followed the guy I ran into - wearing full US Postal team kit, and tried to stay well behind him so he wouldn’t think i was trying to draft, but he kept looking back at me with annoyance, then dropped me anyway. Whatever. Fucking roadies, i swear to God. All aggro and douchery. Meeting a nice roadie is like meeting a stripper who wasn’t abused. Fucking rare.

Aaaanyway, I made it back to the school, found my car and leaned against it for about ten minutes and didn’t move a muscle. Except to get this:

Hot. Tired. But accomplished. I damn well finished. I got the metric. 100K plus a little extra. And now all i could think about was getting these god-damned soaking, stinking bike clothes off of me. My ass was half numb, half screaming in pain. My feet were partially numb. My knees and arms hurt, my back hurt, my legs were buzzing and vibrating, my ankles hurt…in fact the only thing on my body that didn’t hurt was my neck. Literally. That felt fine.

I climbed in the hot car and stripped off right frigging there. Nekkid. I wiped a few locations with the damp towel I so thoughtfully prepared earlier and left in the cooler (which did not stay cold My celebratory beer was warm, so i decided to take it home and drink it later), I changed into the clothes I brought with and waited for Donna.  That’s when I realized I wished I could have caught her while she was still at home. The place was empty. There was no one around, no event, no celebration, just people leaving. I strapped the bike to the rack and waited.

Donna got hit by traffic on top of my mis-estimation of when i would finish, so she pulled up after a bit and we apologized to each other. All I wanted to do at that point was leave and go get Chinese food from our favorite Chinese buffet. That was my “recovery meal.” I ate fifteen different kinds of dead animals and potatoes and noodles and rice. Perfect. Precisely what I wanted.

Overall? I was disappointed in the event, the way it was organized and run. There was almost NO mention of the charities, no presence, nothing. The whole thing came off like people were supposed to know everything already, and there was no assistance or consideration given to new riders. I saw two sag wagons - one provided by a local bike shop and as far as I could tell, not even really part of the event, they were just helping out for the publicity. And good for them. I saw them give a guy a $45 tire when his was cut by a big piece of glass. They helped a lot of people and generated a lot of good will for the shop. Zane’s in Branford, in case you are ever around there.

I saw an event sag wagon exactly once, about 22 miles in. She pulled up and asked if I needed water, but I was good, so I said no thanks and she drove away.  Never saw another one. They never came back to look for stragglers, etc., who are precisely the people who might could use a bit of an assist from the sag wagon at the end of a god-damned brutal frigging ride.

BUT…switching gears to the positives…I DID IT. And over hillier terrain than I have ever ridden on before. yes it took me forever. Yes I was slow. Yes I walked a couple of the more brutally steep little hills. But I finished.  I did it. Two months after getting my butt on a bike for the first time since the early 90s, I rode 100K plus a wee bit extra.

Now I gotta get that 100 miles. One of these weekends I am going to get up at some ungodly early hour, point the bike up Whitney Avenue and ride up CT-10 until I hit the Mass border.   Okay…maybe next summer I’ll do that. In the meantime, I need to thank my wife for putting up with all this cycling craziness. I spent money we do not have and cannot afford, I made her start watching the TdF, I talk endlessly about bikes, and she supports me. baby…thank you.

I also need to thank gnat23 for everything she does for me as regards the cycling. Team Bugsmack, yo. Team mother-effing Bugsmack. Not sure I would have made it through the ride without the motivational help you’ve given me. One day I hope to climb a mountain with you.

Now I have to concentrate on getting all this school crap together…the next big goal is to actually get registered and attend the first day of class.

I’m thinking of riding my bike in, though.