CRW Spring Century 2009

Yesterday the calendar reached the CRW Spring Century, the first big ride of the year. Landing at the end of a busy week, the preparations were not altogether stellar.
Base Miles: check! Commuting a couple days per week through most of winter gave me confidence I could finish the ride.
Long rides: not check. I managed zero rides longer than a commute this year, and my longest route of 25 mi happened only once or twice.
Bike condition: check! I found time the day before to put the fenders back on for the forecast rain, and to put on a new chain. I've ridden the bike on enough commutes to be confident of the other parts. (It's taken a bunch of maintenance this year though.)
Sleep: not check. A party the night before turned into an extended tarot reading featuring rounds of JC's delicious and hearty margaritas. Then I had trouble sleeping as I alternated between feeling hot from the tequila and feeling cold from the fresh breeze through the window.

Luckily, by the start of the ride the forecast had calmed to just morning rain, and as we riders gathered for the start the rain was light. I briefly considered taking off my vest and leaving my glasses in the car but instead I left well enough alone. Four friends of mine had tentatively planned to ride this, so I kept a lookout while the start assembled, but I couldn't find anyone. The ride started late, and in waves, and after standing around in the rain around 20 min I was happy to leave with the first wave - the self-selected fast riders. In the back of my head I heard the advice of my late father in law, "don't ride with the young bucks", but it seemed preferable to more waiting.

The pace picked up as we warmed up, but I held on reasonably well in the group-ride style of previous CRW centuries and the PMC. About half an hour in, a cold front with strong rain came through, and I was very happy I'd never taken off the vest. In fact, a full jacket would have been nice though I wouldn't have stopped to put it on. My glasses also saved me - I was quickly reminded that group rides in the wet mean riding into the continuous fantail from the wheel ahead.

After an hour, my plan to avoid pulling at the head of the group finally unravelled. Pulling means doing more work than anyone else in the group, breaking up the still air. Over the first hour we'd averaged 21MPH, which for me is unsustainable and even unwise. Trying to pull this group was doomed to fail, but it was my turn. I pulled briefly, up to a stop sign, overcooking myself so thoroughly that the group passed me after the stop and I could not keep up. I was "shot out the back of the peloton (group)," as the race announcers say.

I rode alone for a while after that, then was caught by a rider I recognized from the lead group, named Tim. He wanted to work with me as a pace line (taking turns pulling for each other) to try to catch up to the leaders. We tried, but had such different styles that we weren't effective, and my legs were so weak that I told him I couldn't help him anyway. He didn't give up; then we found we'd missed a turn. I was ready to turn around but Tim pulled out a big street map and plotted a course to intercept and possibly save a mile, which might help us catch up. Tim's plan worked beautifully, and when we finally crossed another CRW mark, I was thrilled and shouted to him, "Thanks very much!" Tim was still focused on catching the leaders, and the vital question became how the distance of our route vs CRW route compared. I had to pull over to figure this out. I wanted to keep riding but I figured I owed him for getting me back on track, so we pulled over and I searched the cue sheet as Tim got out his map. Then the leader group zoomed past us and we jumped back on the bikes and tried to catch up. Tim made it, I did not. I never saw any of them again, but after a couple miles I was content with the situation because I couldn't have held their pace anyway.

After a while I reached the commercial center of Exeter, NH. The problem is I wasn't supposed to do this - I'd missed another turn, and turned around to backtrack.

After the first water stop (near the halfway point of the ride) I saw the mark for the first left of the route to the last stop, but then no confirmation marks, and after another mile I turned around again. By this point I felt quite discouraged at my inability to stay on the route, but fought to stay committed to it. (And I redoubled my efforts at checking marks and noting the mileage when I reach one.)

At the two-thirds mark, I caught up to a couple individuals on the ride. This was encouraging as proof I wasn't the last one on the route, and that my pace was somewhat reasonable. I said Hi to the folks and rode behind one briefly, but I shortly decided I wanted to pass them. I tried to let them tack on behind me, and they seemed to take me up on it informally. But just as we were starting to get organized, the markers indicated we were to turn onto a closed road, into a gap between a pair of Jersey barriers. I shouted the news back and rode through the gap. It was about three feet wide, not unlike some bike path barriers on the Cape Cod trail, so I didn't sweat it much but the other riders fell back enough to lose drafting. After a short ride on this road, with grass growing through the pavement, the exit pair of Jersey Barriers came up. Again I shouted back the news, but then as I bore down into it I realized the gap was narrower, about 2 feet, and I started to regret my decision to take it at speed. I wish I'd at least pulled my hands from the handlebar drops up onto the top to save some width, but I just held it and rode cleanly through. Whew! This pair of obstacles was not on the route before!

The last water stop was near mile 75, meaning mile 80 for me including my wrong turns. At this point my Achilles were getting sore and I would have been pretty happy to be done for the day. As I snacked and refilled my bottles, I heard two people give up, seeking rides back to the start. And I heard another had given up at the first stop near mile 50. I've never before heard of someone dropping out of these rides. While I felt sad for the folks pulling out, the news encouraged me too. It wasn't schadenfreude, rather an external confirmation that this was a tough ride and I wasn't the only one feeling beaten down.

From here I faced just 25 miles to the end, just like my summer commute home from work. I counted down a few different ways: miles covered, miles to go, water bottles remaining, ETA. And I sang to myself what I could remember of Joan Osbourne's Spiderweb, with a little bike dancing thrown in. My emergency double-caffeine Gu helped me celebrate 15mi to go. In short, I pulled out all the stops to finish the ride.

In sum, I'm glad I did the ride in terms of my training. I learned a bit about following route markers. But riding alone for most of the day was less fun than the centuries with DP and TT.

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Technical note: One of the many bike tech debates is whether to trust the lubrication that comes on a new chain. Without much planning, this ride was an experiment and it confirmed Jobst Brandt's argument that it's a good lube and so well applied that it's probably the best lube job the chain will ever have. I rode a new SRAM PC-951 on this ride with just the factory lube, and it ran smooth and quiet throughout the ride. I heard a bunch of squeaky chains just after the second water stop. And my fenders make life much harder for the chain than if I didn't have them - I'll guess three times worse. (Very few other riders had fenders.)