![]() ![]() |
|
![]() | |
![]() ![]() ![]() | |
1998 > Boston-Montreal-Boston > Craig's Report
D/2.5/770 33,000' (WW) -- 5/B/770 (SRCC)(as related by Bikeaholic Craig Robertson)
Boston-Montreal-Boston (BMB) is a 1200km (750 mile) randonee run
three out of four years. Audax rules do not allow any other 1200k
events to be run on the years (...1991, 1995, 1999...) of Paris-Brest-Paris,
so it is not run those years. The name roughly describes the route, although it actually starts
about 15 miles west of Boston in Newton, and for 1998, the turnaround
point in Canada was about 20 miles east of Montreal. The advertised
mileage was 744, but I, like everyone else I talked to, had the
distance at about 760-770. I had done the qualifying set of brevets for next year's PBP (200k,
300k, 400k, 600k - all but the 400k were done twice) and that
qualified me for this year's BMB. After vacillating on the subject
for a couple of months I decided in late June to send in my registration
for BMB. My wife, Lorna Toyota, decided to take the trip with
me. She had enough sense to not ride it, but had never been in
New England and would meet me at the check points. Anyone who had experience with this kind of event or distance
was fair game for questions. Jim Frink and Thomas Maslen fielded much of them, but I also got useful input from Susan
Angebrandt, Tom and Cindy Long, and Mike Wilson. As fellow bikeaholic Tom Lawrence later noted, I was doing this ride more in Ultra style, as opposed
to Randonneur style. I suppose that's a good way to describe traveling
with three extra wheels, a full tool box, 3 full sets of lights,
about 40 pounds of bike food and 3 rain jackets. There also were
3 sets of shoes, 2 sets of pedals, extra cogs, chains, tires,
and just about anything else I could think up. There was only
about a third of a suitcase left for normal clothes for Lorna
and myself combined. A later trip to the Furnace Creek 508 indicated that to do it
in true Ultra style would have taken several extra bikes and would
have required a C-130 transport to carry everything needed. Tom picked us up at home and took us to the airport in San Jose
on Saturday August 8th. After hauling the various bags to the
checkin, we went and bought a couple books and a newspaper to
read on the flight. Then upon landing in Boston, we got to reclaim
all the bags (still in one piece no less) and haul them to the
curb and get on the rental car shuttle. Another bag wrestling
session got them into the rental minivan and we headed west to
the hotel in Newton. During the next few days, we mixed playing tourist with getting
everything ready and doing some easy riding. One day we went to
Cape Cod in the morning, and then I went and rode the first 25
miles of the course out and back, managing to make several wrong
turns in the process. Better during practice than the real thing.
We drove out on the course to Brattleboro. I ended up getting
about 120 miles of riding in during that period. We also visited
the local REI, Supercuts, Home Depot, and the grocery store to
pick up the things I didn't want to haul all the way from California,
or had forgotten. On Wednesday, my bike and I passed the inspection, and then Lorna
and I went out to dinner with John Robbins. John, despite being
from Southern California, is a Davis Bike Club member. He had
been unsuccessful in his first attempt at BMB in 1997, and was
determined to be successful this time. Tom Davies was at the inspection,
trying to talk me into starting with him and several others at
the 4:00 A.M. start time, but I wanted nothing to do with it.
Tom goes out faster than I like to, and can stay at that speed
for much too long for my comfort. Besides, I wanted to get a full
nights sleep. I didn't know when my next sleep might be.
Lorna had new bottles of Cytomax, Gatorlode (not to be confused with Gatorade) and flasks of Hammer Gel. Susan Angebrandt had told me that she didn't think she had gotten enough protein in when she had done BMB, so Lorna also mixed up a bottle of fruit juice with a bunch of Trader Joe's protein powder supplement and I drank one of those at each of the first 5 check points. Each one had about 70% of a normal 2,000 calorie diet recomended protein.
I was suffering a bit at this point. My uncle lives in Vermont and had told me that Brattleboro was the warmest place in the state. I would struggle a bit each afternoon, but would begin feeling better when it would start to cool down in the evening. Also, the route from Brattleboro to Ludlow is tough. It is about 55 miles, but has about 4,500 feet of climbing, some of it plenty steep.
The route to Middlebury climbs up to Killington, then has a nice descent before turning toward Middlebury Gap. This was on one of the nicer pieces of pavement on the route; I found out how steep it was on the way back. Even in the dark I got up over 40 mph. I passed several 4:00 starters during this period, and then went up over Middlebury Gap. This climb is one of the feared climbs on the ride, but it didn't seem to be that bad. Maybe because it was dark, or maybe I went a bit slower and stayed in my comfort range. I had to watch this descent as it was twisty. I managed to miss the last turn to the checkpoint at Middlebury, so I got a few extra miles in before I realized this and turned around. At about 1:00 A.M. I arrived at the checkpoint in Middlebury.
I was now 15 hours into this thing and had ridden about 240 miles
including the little bonus mileage. I had packed complete sets
of clothes in ziploc bags, along with a separate bag with towel,
washcloth, soap, and shampoo. Lorna got the one out with a Terrible
Two jersey and my bright red shorts. I took a shower, changed clothes, and ate some of the lasagna
they had, plus went through the usual bike food routine.
As one gets out of the hills, the vegetation changes from forest
to grasslands. By the time I got off of the islands and back onto
the mainland the tree were largely gone. It took me about 5 hours
to get through this, the longest leg at a bit over 85 miles. At Rouses Point, I was in a little corner of New York. I got rid
of the cool weather clothes and the lighting and headed off into
Canada. The route through Canada was really flat and was different
than in previous years. It didn't really go to Montreal, but to
a campground outside a small town, St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, east
of Montreal. I wasn't feeling real well at this point so I stopped
and laid down on a park bench for about 30 minutes. I was also having some mechanical trouble. The saddle mount for
the extra water bottles had started to come loose and one of the
four bolts holding it on had fallen off. Eventually the mount
slid down far enough that it wedged itself into a stable, albeit
slightly less convenient, position. It would be until reaching
Bullard Farm the next day before this occured, so in the interim,
I got to mess with the mount periodically. The route wandered along side the Rive Richelieu, crossing at one point from the west to east side. The bridge was the big climb for this leg. Some more riding, and I got to the turnaround point at 11:30 A.M. It had taken 25.5 hours to get the first 600k in.This was the one checkpoint that Lorna was not at. I had also forgotten my camera so I didn't take any pictures of the Canadian part of the route. I ate some fruit and then headed back south. By now the wind was blowing pretty well, so the trip south was a drag. On the aerobars going 16 mph on flat ground working far harder than I wanted to. I got back to Rouses Point at 4:00 P.M. and ate some food, got some lighting equipment (but not enough) and headed off for Middlebury.
I didn't have my main battery pack for my bar mount light either
as I had expected to get to Middlebury about 10:00 or so. I stopped
and bought some extra batteries (and a bag of chips and a container
of orange juice) at a convenience store. The woman working there
wasn't quite sure what to think of me when I, in answering her
question about what I was doing, explained. Continuing on south, it was back onto those short steep climbs followed by the matching descents. It seemed like every few minutes a car would come by and blind me with their bright headlights. I eventually realized that this was Friday night (it was Thursday, part II for me as I hadn't done any sleeping yet). As I got close to Middlebury, I had some more lighting problems. My headlight would get dimmer when I went over a bump, then it would slowly return to normal brightness. On more than one occasion on a downhill it went so dim that it provided no usable light. A bit disconcerting at 25mph in the dark on a twisting road.
I finally got back to Middlebury, but seemed to be unable to find
the Sportscenter (the checkpoint) I asked some kids that were
It took me far too long to get this all done, but after getting
cleaned up I decided that I had earned a bit of sleep. I folded
the back seat of Lorna's minivan down and laid down. One foot
on the ice chest, one foot on the seat in front of me. I set the
alarm for 4:30 (it was already 1:30) and it took about 30 seconds
to go to sleep. When my alarm went off, it seemed like about 20
seconds later. I hadn't moved. My feet were still on the ice chest
and other seat. Amazingly, I felt refreshed. My legs were a bit
stiff, but after 530 miles of riding, they had every right to
be. I had planned to get on the road by 5:00, but it was starting
to rain. I wasn't that eager to combine riding in the dark with
riding in the rain. I probably was eager for any excuse to sit
around for a while. As it started to get light, we could see that
the sky was clearing, so I left with a tandem and another rider
at about 6:00 A.M.. The largest climb of the ride was about to happen, but I had fresh (relatively) legs for it. Middlebury Gap climbs about 2,000 feet in 6 or 7 miles, but it isn't uniform. It starts pretty slow and then all of a sudden hits about 15%. The special 28 cog I put on felt much better at this point than my usual 26. The problem was that the next gear I had was a 23, which made for a big jump. There were a lot of places that I really wanted something like a 25 or 26. After about a half mile of this really steep section if dropped down to about a 7-8% grade. I had stopped before the steep part to take off my jacket, but had caught and passed the tandem on the steep portion. I caught the other rider here and then rode away from him. The hill then was close to flat for a while before resuming the uphill. We went by a campus of Middlebury College as we neared the top, and then the road went back to really steep for about a mile.
Lorna was there in Ludlow again. I had taken about 4 hours to
do the 65 miles and 3,500 feet of climbing from Middlebury, not
too bad. It was a bit slower than going the other way, but Ludlow
is 500 feet higher than Middlebury, and I wasn't quite as fresh
at this point. I got rid of the extra clothing, but I forgot two
things that I quickly figured out. At every stop, I would exchange
my just used route sheet for a new one, and I would rest my trip
odometer so that I wouldn't have to deal with accumulated errors.
I got about 200 yards out of the stop and turned around. I got
the correct sheet and a zero mileage. What I think was the hardest climb of the trip followed. Mt. Terrible climbs somewhat over 1200 feet coming out of Ludlow, about half of that is in one mile. It starts pretty easy, but then you go around a corner and it just goes straight up. It is close to straight and you can see to the point where the road gets less steep. This is at mile 600, where my legs didn't seem to have anything like their usual power, so this climb, like many, was done standing. The route to Brattleboro then continued with a series of smaller climbs and descents. At the crest of many of these climbs, you would find yourself pointed into a brisk headwind, so that the descents were not quite as fast as one would expect. About ten miles short of Brattleboro I passed a couple of other BMB riders. I would close on them on each climb, and then try to stay even on the downhill stretches.
I finally spotted the Chinese restaurant at the corner of route
2A. It's hard to describe how absurd this location seemed. This
restaurant was out in the middle of rural Massuchusetts, with
not much in the way of anything close by. Any restaurant would
have seemed out of place, but this was really odd. I knew from
the trip out, that I was only a couple of miles from the last
checkpoint, and then I would turn west and quit fighting the headwinds.
Lorna was once again at the checkpoint. It was 5:00 as I got in
and was 5:11 when I left. The driveway was gravel, so I rode through
the grass as it was easier to deal with. I knew it was about 75
miles to the finish and that the last 40 would be pretty easy,
but I was getting pretty sore and tired. My rear was getting a
bit chafed and at this point my right achilles tendon decided
that it was getting tired of the whole thing. The route had a
series of short climb and descents, with a general upward trend
for the next 30 miles. Under normal conditions I would just power
over these, but I didn't have much in the way of power to work
with anymore. I went back through the same towns I had seen on
the way out the first morning, and eventually there was a decent
sized downhill and the climbs seemed to get much easier. One of the interesting things on the route sheet was the mention
of the ice cream parlor in Sterling. As I got closer the idea
of a shake started to sound pretty good, besides, I needed to
go to the bathroom and put on my reflective vest as it was getting
dark. I got there and went to the bathroom, but decided I didn't
really need the shake. One of the best pieces of advice I had gotten was from Jim Frink,
which was to ride the first part of the route out and back. It
was getting dark, and as one approached Boston the amount of traffic
grew rapidly. But at about this point, I got back on familiar
roads. I didn't look at my route sheet for the last 30 miles.
About 25 miles from the finish I caught up with Bill Schwarz from
Albany, New York. Bill was about the only person I had ridden
any distance with during the whole ride. We did most of the first
300k together.
It was sure nice to get to the finish and get off my bike. It
was even better when I found that they had beer (Sam Adams was
a sponsor) and since they had run out of pizza, Dave Jordan ordered
some more. After eating a number of slices of pizza, and doing
some beer rehydrating, I waddled back up to the room in the hotel.
I managed to get most of the sunscreen, sweat, and road grime
off of me and get in bed. Sunday morning, I got up and took a
bath. It was soothing to the saddle sore parts. Lorna and I went
out to breakfast, then I started packing things up. The food that
had been eaten on route didn't have to come home so things ended
up about 30 pounds lighter. I also managed to forget to pack the
floor pump, and my arm and leg warmers; this helped make it even
lighter. I waited around at the finish with the other who had gotten in,
watching and applauding the other riders as they finished. They
kept a supply of beer around throughout the day, along with various
items to snack on. A bit after noon, John Robbins came in with
several other riders. About 4:00 they served us a dinner, and
then Lorna and I went out for a second dinner. The next morning we got up real early for the trip back. We had
an 8:00 A.M. flight out and had to check the bike stuff. Sitting
on the plane was pretty uncomfortable, but so was standing up.
When we got back to San Francisco, we met Bikeaholic Team Captain Lisa outside the baggage check area. Lisa had my RAV4 and we managed
to load all the luggage in. Lisa drove back to her place while
I sat wedged in the back with just enough room to close the door.
I did sleep pretty well every night for the next week, but I only
rode my bike to work once the first week I was back. That day
I also went to the usual Thursday night Cuesta ride, but at the
start turned around and went home. Team Bikeaholics Member Craig Robertson
|