So this is what 197 bpm feels like

Grease Monkey's pervy roommate invited me to come on a century ride through the White Mountains in New Hampshire this weekend. It sounded like fun, so I told him I'd go. "I'm glad you're coming," he said, "so I won't be the last one up the hills."
Daggers shot out of my eyes and I said, "Oh, I suck at climbing, I have no problem bringing up the rear so that no one feels bad." It was a lie, of course.

He arranged for me to carpool with a friend of his who turned out to be an insufferable motor mouth. He showed up at Grease Monkey's house half an hour late, and the whole ride up was telling me, "If you go 75, we may still be able to get there with 20 minutes to spare." This was in a 50 zone. After a bad experience with a speeding ticket, I don't push the speed limit anymore. But the guy was a navigator for the Coast Guard and couldn't keep his eyes off the needle of my speedometer. "That guy's got a pretty good pace going, follow that Suburban," he would encourage me. It was making me nervous, so I complied. Somewhere in New Hampshire we got pulled over, and I was ready to push the guy out of the car. I can't afford to pay a speeding ticket, let alone the increased insurance.
"Do you know how fast you were going?" the cop asked.
"No, I don't," I said.
"You were going 50, this is a 35 zone. Is there any reason for your hurry?"
"Nothing other than that I have to go to the bathroom, which always makes things feel more urgent," I told him.
"Really? You have to go to the bathroom? Why didn't you stop? There was a Dunkin' Donuts and a gas station back there. Do you want to give me another excuse?"
"No," I said. "I'm not going to lie."
I guess that was the right answer, because he let me off with a warning and Motor Mouth will live to see another day.

When we showed up, we had plenty of time to spare. The Pervy Roommate came over and yanked up my shorts to about my nipples. He does that all the time. He says it looks like I'm "carrying a load in my shorts" or "like I've got a dick," but I know it's so that he can either look at my cameltoe or my ass. I can't wait till Grease Monkey moves out and I don't have to put up with the guy anymore. Then he put a road rash kit in my pocket. "What's that?" I asked.
"We'll be going down some fast descents," he said. "If we bring it, we won't need it."
"Why don't you carry it?"
"Because I've got no room in my pockets." I looked. He had plenty of room in his pockets, he just thought I'd be the most likely to be in the back.

Just as we left, a latecomer showed up. Some of us went on, while others stayed to wait for him. Motor Mouth sat on my wheel yapping away for a 7ish-mile gradual climb. "You know," he said, "you're pushing a much slower cadence than I am. You should really conserve your energy, you've gotta let your aerobic system take care of it." Later, I learned that he has read one and only one book: Chris Carmichael's book. Great, I was talking to one of those people who thinks the only way to ride well is to ride like Lance.

I wanted to drop him right then and there. Instead I put on my most cheerful voice. "Yeah, I tried the high cadence thing for a season. It didn't work for me. I don't really have much motivation to change, since I keep winning this way." Then I popped it into the big ring and sped up a little bit so that he would have to shut up.

The other guy that was with us had a bike that made me cringe. It was an aluminum frame (scoff!) with a giant pannier rack complete with bag, and an attachment on his handlebars so he could fit all his other attachments on his handlebars. He wasn't even wearing a bike jersey, just a tech muscle shirt from somewhere like Planet Fitness. And an Mdot tattoo on his calf. I didn't know what to make of the guy. I can't stand tour riders that carry so much unnecessary shit, but I can't stand Mdot geeks who take themselves too seriously. He was both sides of the spectrum at the same time. We got to the first turn and stopped to wait for everyone else to catch up. Mr. Touring Bike/Mdot stood his bike in the middle of the road and came over to me and Motor Mouth. "What? Where are your guys' kick stands?" he asked in that dry way that means that he was joking. I decided I really liked the guy.

Once everyone else caught up, we started up a several-mile climb together (Bear Notch Road if you know the area). I happened to be in front, and Pervy Roommate started narrating so that he could be the center of attention at all times. "Claire's sitting at the front," he said in a bad British accent to mimic the tour commentators. "She's setting a blistering pace. She's positively dancing on the pedals." I just kept riding. "Hey, Claire. How does it feel to have a guy with a kickstand sitting on your wheel?!" he asked. I had to laugh. Then a twiggy guy who I like a lot went off the front. Me and one other guy responded. Pervy Roommate, Motor Mouth,Mdot Guy, and the others stayed behind. I pushed hard and kept up with the guys, and then chased Twiggy down the 40 mph descent on the other side. The other boys were a few minutes behind us.

The ride went on like that, with the three of us dropping everyone else on all the hills, and then having to stop and wait (at the first stop, we were waiting an hour for everyone to show up). Climbing up one long climb with a few steep "walls" thrown in, Twiggy went back to take a picture of some funny road graffiti. When he made his way back up to me and The Other Guy, he reported on our progress. "You guys are already about a quarter mile up on them," he said. "I passed Pervy Roommate and he goes, 'I fuckin' hate hills, man,' and then he threw a punch at me." Now that Twiggy was up here, he and The Other Guy stepped on it a bit. I was hanging tight, and then we hit the steepest grade of the day: 13%, but it felt like more. I rode as hard as I could, but soon I was seeing spots and breathing like a moribund asthmatic. My heartrate hit 197, and I had to lay off the pace or risk collapsing. I fell back bit by bit, losing some 50m to them in the next couple of miles to the top.

On the threshold of death...

I wasn't feeling all that great. I don't think I was eating regularly enough, and I'd started the day dehydrated. Still, we had no trouble dropping the others, which was good. Motor Mouth was determined to stay on my wheel as long as possible. Twiggy tried to talk to him once. "I've gotta watch her hub, man!" he told him.
"Her hub's a little lower," Twiggy pointed out.
Motor mouth would sit behind me and talk, and talk as he stared at my ass. Twiggy and The Other Guy helped me push the pace until we were riding so fast that Motor Mouth couldn't talk and breathe at the same time. Then we would speed up a little more and he would drop off. Once we couldn't see him behind us anymore, we would lay off the pace–but not so much that he might catch up.

On the final, gradual climb that started around mile 70, I started to crack a little bit. I told my footmen that I had no intention of putting myself in the hospital to keep up with them, and let them pull away. Don't get me wrong, my heart rate was hanging around 180 (I did Patriot this year at an average of 173) and the this is hard, what the fuck am I out here for?! inner monologue was going at full volume (so that I could hear it over my breathing), but I watched the boys pull further and further ahead until eventually I lost sight of them around a bend. By the time I crested the top of the hill I was ready to whimper and whine to the first person who would listen. Unfortunately, my two footmen had waited for me and I wasn't about to let them know how much I was hurting. Instead I thanked them for waiting for little ol' me and kept riding so they wouldn't make me wait for Motor Mouth and the rest of them.

At the bottom of the 14-mile descent that was our reward for the hill, Twiggy stopped at a DQ to wait for everyone else. The Other Guy and I went on alone. I was feeling the effects of riding so hard, and all I wanted was to get off my bike. Not to mention that I had a HUGE saddle sore on my... well... you know. As we rode the last 5 miles into Conway, someone honked at us. It was the Pervy Roommate's girlfriend. "What's she doing here?!" The Other Guy asked. "All the outlets are in the other direction! There's nowhere she could go out here except to pick up the Pervy Roommate!" We rode through the traffic of all the people who had come to the outlets in tax-free New Hampshire to do their back-to-school shopping and laughed at how we were the only ones moving for miles and miles. After stopping at one traffic light I pushed a pedal down and felt the satisfying sensation of my bike jumping forward, accelerating faster than the cars for a second. I swooped around a turning car back onto the shoulder of the road and felt at one with my bike, a machine that let me balance on two inches of razor-thin pressurized rubber and fly down a hill at 45 mph. This is why I love this sport, I thought. That and the fact that most of those guys are way behind me.

The Other Guy and I got in after about 5.5 hours of riding (but 7.5 hours in real time) for 105 miles. Half an hour later, Twiggy and Mdot Guy rolled in all smiles. After another 5 minutes the Pervy Roommate rolled in drooped over his bike next to The Late Guy. Where was my ward? I couldn't leave until Motor Mouth had come in. It turns out that everyone was too irritable by the end of the ride to put up with him. He was bonking, so everyone had dropped him easily. A minute later my phone rang. "Hi, Claire. I... I'm bonking pretty bad. Were we supposed to take a left or a right on Main Street?"

"Right." We'd made rights all day. It was a circle. Mr. Coast Guard Navigator should have known to keep making rights to get back to where he'd started.

Finally, the caboose rolled in 45 minutes after I'd finished. The whole ride home he talked at me about how I should ride a tandem with him. All I kept thinking was, Why? So I can drag your ass around and you can stare at mine?! I wanted to remind him about what he'd said about gear mashers, but that would have been rude.