Another brush with fame, another chace to taste my foot

I wasn't going to write a post about this. I'm supposed to be tapering. I didn't want to endure the disapproving looks that people would be giving me through cyberspace if I told you that I did a TOUGH 60-mile bike ride less than 2 weeks from my ironman. But then, circumstances forced my hand and I just HAVE to tell you about it.

Today was the Charles River Wheelmen's (CRW) Climb to the Clouds century. This is the ride that I tried to do from a cue sheet back in April and got so horribly lost. The keynote of this event, though, is the climb up Mt. Wachusett, a 2,000' ski mountain which is the highest point in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I wanted to climb that mountain.

Really bad.

So I checked out the web site and saw that there was a 50-mile option to the ride. It meant driving further, but I could still climb my mountain. 50 miles is okay for a taper, right?

I knew a whole bunch of people who were supposed to be doing the ride, but since I'd decided to do it last minute I didn't get to tell any of them and just planned on riding it alone. So imagine my delight when I pulled in and in the space next to me was George, one of the legions of straight men over 40 that I've befriended at one event or another. I got out of my car with my arms spread wide. "George! I'm so glad to see you!" I said.
He looked at me. He squinted. He raised his sunglasses off his eyes. He kept looking at me. No recognition.
"I'm Claire," I said.
"OOOOOOH! Claire! I didn't recognize you without your bike and helmet!" he said. Thank god I'm not the only one. "What are you doing here?!"
"I couldn't sit still. I really, really, really wanted to come, so here I am!"

I ran off to register and use the bathroom, and when I got back to put my bike together I saw George leaving with a whole posse dressed in matching NEBC gear (the competitive club in these here parts). That was fine. I wanted to ride easy today, and that would be a lot easier to achieve if I was alone. I put my bike together, pumped up my tires, changed my shoes, changed my watch, and realized I forgot my gloves. Fuck. Then I realized I didn't have my helmet. FUCK! I'd driven an hour to get here and there was no time to go home and get it. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I rode over to registration. "Hi, I forgot my helmet... Can I have my 20 bucks back?" I asked. They suggested I wait for the King of the Bike Geeks to come over from the 100-mile start, he usually comes with extra everything. That seemed like as good a solution as any, although the King of the Bike Geeks would never let me live it down.

Luckily, one of the volunteers took pity on me and started asking around if anyone had a spare helmet. As luck would have it, a tall, skinny guy with a small head DID have an extra helmet. If I tightened it as much as it would go and jammed my ponytail in the back, it almost fit convincingly. I thanked him profusely and set off on my own. I had to make sure I got back before he did. I had planned on doing the shortest ride, but when I found out that that rout didn't go up the mountain I traded in my 50-mile cue sheet for the metric century cue sheet. I wanted to climb that mountain!

For the first 20 miles we climbed slowly and I passed people bit by bit. No one passed me until we got to the foot of the mountain. I've said in previous posts that I'm a climber. I lied. I don't know where I got that idea. Or maybe I used to be a climber and I lost it with all this New England rolling, I don't know. But for whatever reason, I am no longer a climber. I passed a few people who were weaving drunkenly all over the road trying to make the grade less severe by turning a 4-mile road into a 10-mile rout via S-curves. But mostly still, I got passed. On the way up I spotted George coming down, but he didn't recognize me, and I didn't call out. The hill wasn't too, too steep. The grade never went above 10% and it never even stayed at that for more than a quarter mile or so. But still, it was enough to have me in my lowest gear and sweating bullets.

Then, all by himself, the guy who broke the fixed gear course record at the 24-hour race last weekend blasted out onto the road in the other direction on his fixed gear again. "HEY!" I yelled. He was the boyfriend of the other girl in the 12-hour division, Emily, who is NOT a bitch. His name is Dave, but I couldn't remember that at the time.
"Hey! Claire, right? Emily's waiting down at the visitor's center."
I couldn't for the LIFE of me remember his name. We circled each other chatting for a few seconds without getting off our bikes, and then I continued up the road and he continued down it.

I got to the top without much hooplah and just turned around. There wasn't much to do up there for a lonely girl riding all by herself. Now the descent! YESSSS! This was what I had been waiting for. This was what I was risking my fresh legs for: steep grades and hairpin turns! But the quality of the concrete was pretty shitty, and I wound up braking way more than I wanted to the whole way down. Every time I hit a divot I thought that I was going to knock my teeth out, and the corners were so rough that you had to take them slow to keep from losing your bike out from under you at some frost heave or something. Lame.

When I got to the bottom George was standing there with his group of NEBC riders, many of whom were women. Women! I thought, I HATE riding with women! But there was no way around it now, even if I didn't know George I would have fallen in with this crowd at the pace we were going. There were still some pretty significant downhills, and I got caught braking at the back of the group on the first one. This would not do! I tried to power ahead, and I got to pull for a little while, but at the first hint of an uphill they all rushed around me on all sides. I had to ride as hard as I could to keep up with them, and I was back in the ass end when we got to the next downhill. Damn. These were the same roads and hills I'd run in Stu's 30K in March (which nearly killed me), and I was having to work way, way harder than I wanted to to keep up. But I refused to let all these women get away! My rule in life is never to be dropped by a female if I can help it.

At the 25-ish mile mark I met up with George, I met up with Emily and Dave around miles 45 or 50. Note that after mile 30, the course was relatively flat! No wonder I was dying out there!

It was only about 80*, but still about 100% humidity (no exaggeration) and absolutely no breeze. I was raining sweat. My hands were so sweaty that there were times I couldn't get enough of a grip on the brakes to shift. Also my shifter cables had been kind of fucked up all week and my bike couldn't seem to pick a gear. This was a hell of a time to only have the use of half my gears.

The group stopped at the next water stop. "Way to go! You're giving 'em hell!" George said.
"Are you kidding me?!" I asked. "I try to pull ahead to get some personal space and the pack just chews me up and spits me out the back!" I tried to get a few seconds' head start when we got back out on the road again, but that was gone in a matter of seconds. What I hated most was when our group came up on another pack, because I would have to work on negotiating my way through the new pack, while still trying to keep up with my pack. God help me if we caught a group on a hill, which is exactly what was happening now! I was riding so hard that I thought that my heart was going to explode when I looked over and saw a couple of riders in "Radonneurs of New England" jerseys. Ultracyclists! As I passed the first one I looked over. It was Dave, the fixed gear guy, and Emily was right ahead. That seemed like just about the best damned excuse in the world to slow down.
"What are you doing riding with those shady NEBC characters?" Dave, the fixed gear guy asked.
"I keep trying to get away from them and it's not working!" I said. "I pass them and they catch up, I try to drop back and wind up catching them before long."
Then I caught up with Emily. "I think it's funny that we're riding with John Kerry," she said.
"What?! Really?!"
"Yeah, I was riding next to him before staring at him thinking, 'You look... familiar,' and then I realized it. It makes sense..."
The man who was allegedly John Kerry was a few riders ahead, just behind the NEBC crew, who had not dropped us after all.


We all stopped at the next water stop and I took a good look at the man who was allegedly John Kerry. He was a bigger man than I expected. Tall and solid-looking, but fit for an old guy. It was hard to recognize him with the big old sunglasses and the helmet, but it was him alright. I have a rule of never speaking to famous people, and since I was RAINING sweat, it did not seem like a good time to tell John Kerry that I voted for him, so I did not speak to John Kerry. I waved goodbye to George and rode on ahead with Emily and Dave who were going a more comfortable pace and were actually my age. "I saw John Kerry," I confided to Emily. "It looks like he's gotten fat. It's a shame that they don't have photographers at this event. Wouldn't it be great to stick with him all the way to the finish and then out-sprint him at the line? I'd ride the extra 40 miles for that photo."
"Yeah," said Emily. "When we were done I'd turn to him and say, 'Goddammit John Kerry! You lose at EVERYTHING!'"
I take back calling Emily 'Skinny Bitch' and pretty much anything bad I might have said or thought about her. It was the greatest quip ever.
"He's got a nice bike though," Emily added. He was riding a purple custom Serotta. I don't know how I feel about a presidential candidate riding a purple bike, but it doesn't get much nicer than Serotta. Maybe if he rode a manly red, white, and blue bike like mine, this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
"Sure," I said, "paid by for the tax dollars of Massachusetts."
"WHAAAT?" said Dave, who was in the front pulling.
I pulled up next to him just as we were passing a guy in a pink jersey, "PAID FOR BY THE TAX DOLLARS OF MASSACHUSETTS!" I yelled.
"EEEEASY there, killer," he said. I thought maybe he was talking to the guy that we were passing. Had he swerved? When we had put a few yards between us and the guy in the pink jersey Dave said, "That was John Kerry's aide guy right there!" Yet again, I had put my foot in my mouth. I looked up the road and sure enough, there was John Kerry's giant yellow ass atop his purple bike just a few yards up the road.
"Errrr, ummmm... I mean these wonderfully paved roads!" I said loudly, more as a joke than anything else. I wasn't sure how nice I had to be to John Kerry? Did I have to worry about hurting his feelings? Could he sick the Patriot Act on me for criticizing his bike? Maybe if John Kerry were actually president I wouldn't be afraid of my government. Luckily, just as we were coming around to pass John Kerry, we reached the 60-mile turn-off and I said goodbye to my friends.
"BYE CLAIRE!" they yelled.
Oh shit! Now John Kerry knows my name! What if he comes to my house and asks for the state tax refund back to buy himself some new carbon fiber toys?! I thought as I rode away.

And then I finished. George and the NEBC bitches came in shortly behind me. I drove home, had the bike shop fix my shifter cables, and made some lunch. So far, John Kerry has not come to demand an apology for my insulting his bike. And by the way, I'm pretty sure that if I had ridden the extra 20 miles back to Concord, I could have out-sprinted John Kerry into the parking lot. Because if John Kerry were any good at close races with photo finishes, he would have been in Washington today, not riding a purple bike through "Fruit Country" in Western Mass.

Coming soon: More brushes with greatness and more shit talking, this time about a PINK bike.