Activity: road cycling
Location: Wesfield, MA > many other towns in Western Massachusetts (I’ll update this)
Distance: 112.4 miles (very hilly)
Duration: 6:46 (plus 1:00 of stoppage time for a tire issue)
Weather: clear and cold, then clear and warm, 38 to 71 degrees
Avg HR: 163 (max 186)
Type: aerobic

The “Great River Ride” was certainly great: great course, great scenery, great hills – and great trouble with my front tire.

About 32 miles into the ride, I went through a bit of gravel to avoid a stopped rider. In doing so, a big piece of glass sliced a 7 mm wide, vertically-oriented hole through my new front tire and tube. It was too big a hole to “boot” with a PowerBar wrapper, so I needed a new tire. I waited about 40 minutes for a good samaritan to arrive with a new tire – he handed it over, no questions asked, and rode away. I also needed to flag down another rider to get a good pump, as my micro unit succeeded only in breaking the valve stem of my first spare tube (I had a second tube, which was a wise decision on my part).

The problems continued from there. As I’d been stopped for almost an hour, my body had cooled down. So getting started again threw my metabolism into a whirl. At the mile 46 checkpoint, I added more air to my front tire (I’d been riding with it at 70 psi – far from the ideal 115 psi), ate some high-electrolyte food (bananas and PB&J sandwiches, mixed up some fresh Gatorade, and set off for the next leg.

The next leg contained a hill called East River Hill. The “hill” was trying on the senses: you could see the top from the bottom, a ruler-straight road with about 880 656 feet of vertical rise over 1.3 miles. I’m used to long hills with curves, where you can always anticipate the top being around the next corner, where there are variations in the slope. This hill didn’t meet any of that, an 8 9.3 percent grind the whole way.

But just a short way past the top of East River Hill was the best rest stop: they served hot, fresh, local baked potatoes. I loaded mine with salt, pepper and a dab of butter and relished it. I went a bit salt-crazy at this stop (about 70 miles into the ride), as another rider noted that I had a lot of salt crust on my face – a sure sign of electrolyte deficiency, which explains why I’d felt sore for the past 20 miles (though I didn’t cramp). So I added a bit of extra salt to my Gatorade and water before I left for the next checkpoint.

There were other killer hills on this ride too – most of ’em curvy, but followed by adrenaline-pumping descents. And the whole ride was awash in some of the most vibrant, fluorescent New England leaf colors in many, many years. The Berkshire Hills are simply gorgeous on days like today, and the crystal clear, dry weather accentuated the deep blue autumn sky’s contrast with the yellows, greens, oranges and reds of fall in New England. It really lives up to the claims of Bicycling magazine, who deem this ride one of the top ten century rides in the U.S.

The rest of the ride was without incident, and truth be told: even though I felt like absolute crap over the post-tire-incident ride, I actually pulled in decent split times between checkpoints, averaging 18.3 mph over the last 80 miles of the ride. I turned in my first brevet card at the finish, where a yummy BBQ and pasta feast awaited my very hungry and thirsty body.

This is a ride that I’ll definitely do again – a classic, even if my day wasn’t.