I decided on a route to pile on the miles, but keep the climbing at bay. A route to a “fun” climb in Northfield, which I discovered way back in 2013.

Seven other riders meet me at Pulaski Park in Northampton for a 9 AM start. The sky was cloudy and the temperature in the low 50’s.

The route out of town was quite standard, like an NCC Wednesday Night Ride- however, Hatfield is in the process of milling Main St- thanks to Madeline’s intel– we sped passed the usual Elm St overpass turn, and continued on Rte 5 to Chestnut St- which dumped us back onto River Rd past the construction.

We had a strong group of riders- including Mike Y and Frank S who both took long pulls. I was appreciative even though the wind had not yet kicked up.

Once we crossed Rte 116 to the north leg of River Rd, porta-potties were more plentiful than I have ever seen on a ride! Like, about every 3 miles.

From there, it was a relaxed, social pace along the Turners Falls canal.

Relaxation was short lived. We popped out at the bridge crossing the river, and headed up the climb to Gill Center.  Gill has a cute center, but the scenery is epic. Northfield Mt. Hermon school is on the left, but on the right is the South Mountain Ridge (and others) just over the Connecticut River.  Unfortunately, Elissa turned back here due to time constraints.

After Gill center Main road eventually hits Rte 10, where we navigated by the single lane construction of the bridge over the CT. River into Northfield Center. Here, we stopped at Mims’s store to refuel. Joe noted that we had as many bike brands as riders.

Now that we added weight, the “feature” of the day was just across the street. That would be the climb up Gulf. This one is hard. We were saying it is easier than Greylock. Not sure if my legs agree. Depending on where you want to put the segment… 2 miles and 7.5% average grade. I saw 18% on my computer. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic on this road, it appears it was a detour route for parts of Rte 2 or Rte 10/63. This thing just keeps going and going up. A very healthy climb.

We regrouped at the parking lot for the Brush Mountain trails and I was able to get a group photo.

There are rewards for the pain. From here, there was a wonderful descent into Irving center. On previous rides this area, we had stopped at the store at the bottom- the intersection with Rte 2. But, I noted it had changed hands into a restaurant, so that is why we fueled up in Northfield center.

A couple miles on the very busy Rte 2, we took a left over the Millers Falls River- with a kind of questionable bridge.

After a safe crossing, there is a little climb… this is Farley Rd. I love this area because there are few cars and it is parallel to the Millers River for a while. I don’t love that it is quite an ascent to Wendell.

In the center of Wendell I routed us down Montague Rd and then West St for a change. West St was freshly paved and proved to be a very fun and fast roll.

We passed Lake Wyola and continued down, down, and down N. Leverett Rd. Frank took the head on this stretch for a long time. I had forgotten how nice, and long, of a descent this was. We held a petty good clip down this, despite my Garmin telling me I was doing 10 MPH (tree cover, I guess).

Crossing Rte 63, and 47, I put us on lovely Montague back roads to hook us back onto the familiar Falls Rd and eventually Rte 47 in Sunderland.

I was cooked at this point and dreading the ride back on Rte 47. The wind had changed to “unfavorable for us suckers”, but wow. Mike Y and Frank S took some massive, long pulls to drag my tired butt back to Hadley. I put in all I could to hang on to their wheels. Once we turned onto Cemetery Rd I gave up and sat up.

We all split off to our various homeward trails along the bike path. I arrived in Northampton about 2:15. 17.3 MPH for the route- impressive and amazing group!

And about homeward trails... the sky had looked a bit threatening as we were rolling into Northampton. I got completely soaked on my ride back home to Easthampton in what amounted to a "very isolated 15 minute downpour".

Join us for pizza and drinks to celebrate another fabulous group ride season. While this may mark the end of some outdoor club rides, keep an eye on the calendar for rides that will continue through the fall! When: Wednesday, September 17th from 7:15-9pm Where: Northampton Bicycle (319 Pleasant St) Hopefully many members will hop on a club ride prior to gathering, but it's certainly not required. Come as you are, whether that's spandex, business casual, socks and sandals, or perhaps a tux. RSVP here for pizza and drinks!

We wrapped up the 2025 time trial and hillclimb series tonight and it was quite a finale! After having to yell at a stupid driver at the start who felt that getting around 9 riders waiting to start the time trial with almost 2 car widths to maneuver by us might have been a gross inconvenience, we all settled into a nice peddling rhythm against a mildish headwind.

No PRs tonight but here are the results:

1. Sam Veggeberg; Time: 21:54; 25.21 mph; 10 points

2. Frank Sleegers; Time: 22:49; 24.19 mph; 9 points

3. Andy MacDonald; Time: 23:32; 23.46 mph; 8 points

4. Jonathan O'Keeffe; Time: 23:41; 23.31 mph; 7 points

5. Joe Lellman; Time: 24:01; 22.98 mph; 6 points

6. Melissa Warwick; Time: 24:40; 22.38 mph; 5 points

7. Tim Pitkin; Time: 25:10; 21.93 mph; 4 points

8. David Goodwin; Time: 25:37; 21.55 mph; 3 points

9. Madeline Nagy; Time: 25:43; 21.46 mph; 2 points

10. Shawn Lakota; Time: 30:00; 18.4 mph; 1 points

Shawn flatted about a mile from the finish and asked that I give him a DNF but I instead just gave him a slow time. Hope you'll be okay with this, Shawn!

So the TT men's final standings could not have been any closer. Frank, in spite of spending the summer in Germany, took 1st with 60 points. 2nd was Andy with 59 points and 3rd was Jonathan with 58. WOW!

The TT women's final standings were a little more spread out. 1st was Madeline with 45 points, 2nd was Melissa with 39 points and 3rd was Alicia with 9 points.

The Overall men's top three were Andy in 1st with 155, Sam in 2nd with 136 and Jonathan in 3rd with 135.

The Overall women's top three were Madeline in 1st with 104, Melissa in 2nd with 95 and Phoebe in 3rd with 37.

Congrats to everyone who participated in any event this year. A special thanks to Jonathan for all his awesome background data machinations and for filling in during the three weeks that I was away.

In the final hillclimb of our 2025 series, we had 11 riders tackle this beautiful climb on an absolutely beautiful evening. There were 9 riders for the 5:30 mass start and 2 riders at another time. Surprisingly, the fastest time of the night was from someone who has done a few of these this year, but never reported his time to me. Beau Guenther posted a Strava time of 8:42 which put him in first over our winner Ryan by almost a minute. YIKES!

Today's official results are as follows:

1. Ryan Davis; Time: 9:35; 11.83 mph; 12 points

2. Garret Theberg; Time: 10:27; 10.85 mph; 11 points

3. Sam Veggeberg; Time: 10:59; 10.32 mph; 10 points

4. Nick Davis; Time: 12:13; 9.28 mph; 9 points

5. Andy MacDonald; Time: 12:23; 9.16 mph; 8 points

6. David Goodwin; Time: 13:08; 8.63 mph; 7 points

7. Shawn Lakota; Time: 13:40; 8.3 mph; 6 points

8. Madeline Nagy; Time: 13:49; 8.21 mph; 5 points

9. Jonathan O'Keeffe; Time: 14:05; 8.05 mph; 4 points

10. Tim Pitkin; Time: 14:17; 7.94 mph; 3 points

11. Frank Sleegers; Time: 15:38; 7.25 mph; 2 points

12. Joe Lellman; Time: 16:08; 7.03 mph; 1 points

There were two PRs tonight - Shawn by 1:05 and Garret by 0:31.

The final Hillclimb podium looks like this:

Men - Sam with 115 points, Ryan with 114 (!!!) and Andy with 96.

Women - Madeline with 59 points, Melissa with 56 and Phoebe with 37.

Thanks to all who participated this year. 

Next week is the Short Time Trial and is the last race of the series.

Except for one (okay, maybe 2) outlier(s), times for the "Race of Truth" tonight were unusually tight, only 2 minutes separated 2nd from 10th. We had a pretty respectable tailwind heading north to the McClellan Farm Road turnaround point (and one fairly slow moving tractor that all of us needed to get around). The headwind on the way back was as expected.

However, Chas Mathers did the TT at some other time today and, as he has in the past, blew the time standard deviation out the window. Frank S, just back from basking in Germany all summer, returned to clock a great time for second. Madeline and I traded attacks on the return trip and passed each other more times than I can accurately remember.

No PRs tonight. However, the men's TT leaderboard sees a three way tie between Frank, Jonathan and Andy (51 points) and will be decided in two weeks at the short TT. The women's leaderboard is pretty much wrapped up with Madeline amassing 43 points to Melissa's 34.

In the Overall men's race, Andy has a decent lock on first with 139 points with Jonathan a distant 124. In the women's race, Madeline also is sitting pretty with 97 points to Melissa's 90.

Here are today's results:

1. Charles Mathers; Time: 30:03; 25.16 mph; 11 points

2. Frank Sleegers; Time: 33:10; 22.79 mph; 10 points

3. Andy MacDonald; Time: 33:22; 22.66 mph; 9 points

4. Shawn Lakota; Time: 33:59; 22.25 mph; 8 points

5. Jonathan O'Keeffe; Time: 34:05; 22.18 mph; 7 points

6. Madeline Nagy; Time: 34:43; 21.78 mph; 6 points

7. Richard McWalter; Time: 34:45; 21.76 mph; 5 points

8. Melissa Warwick; Time: 34:57; 21.63 mph; 4 points

9. Joe Lellman; Time: 35:12; 21.48 mph; 3 points

10. David Goodwin; Time: 35:23; 21.37 mph; 2 points

11. Roberto Ludovico; Time: 38:42; 19.53 mph; 1 points

Next week is the last hillclimb of the series and is the short but sweet Skinner Mountain climb.

Winter is coming, the dark is rising, the seasons are turning, and the 2025 Monday Night Intro Ride season comes to an end tonight. But not before we eat a bunch of ice cream!

I threw a wrench in our normally orderly progression of ride routes tonight by altering our Northampton loop to include a season-ending ice cream stop. This had a bunch of cascading consequences that I had not really anticipated:

1. On unfamiliar roads west of downtown NoHo, a sudden stop caught Tony by surprise and dropped him to the pavement. "Just a flesh wound", he literally cried, and rallied onward.
2. A couple of big hills westbound on Route 66 were too much for Beth, and she pulled the plug and decided to turn around and return on her own.
3. My slowing down to ride with Beth broke the group apart, and they disappeared up the road ahead of me. "Turn left on Old Wilson", I shouted, but it was far too late.
4. Old Wilson -- turn left or continue on? I think Shelby had the route in her computer, maybe she turned them left? Or maybe they all missed the turn and went straight?
5. I'm gonna go left on Old Wilson. And continue on to the ice cream place. Maybe they stopped there.
6. They didn't.
7. OK, retrace my steps. Maybe they're still circulating somewhere between here and Route 66. This seems increasingly unlikely, but it's all I've got at this point.
8. They're here! At the intersection of Old Wilson and Florence Rd. Angels sang!

Now we're back on track. We proceed onward to Sips & Scoops in Easthampton, which has the most patient ice cream server in New England, as we overwhelm her with nine simultaneous orders.

I go first, and order a "medium" cone. This is a mistake. I wish I had a picture, but it is simply not possible to extract my phone from my jersey pocket while balancing this ridiculous tower of ice cream in my other hand.

The others in our group take notice, and the rest of the orders are "small" and "kids" and "baby-size". Some struggle with those as well.

Suffice it to say that Sips & Scoops offers an outstanding value proposition, and their ice cream is excellent as well (I heartily recommend the chocolate chip cookie dough). I'd link to them, but it looks like they just opened this summer and don't have a website yet, so you can find them on Google here.

We spent kind of a long time at S&S, so I had to alter the plans for the rest of our ride to get us home before dark. Tony had another little crash on the Old Wilson floodplain, without any visible injuries. We continued on through downtown Northampton, where the group did an excellent job safely navigating through traffic lights and pedestrian crosswalks and parked cars, arriving back at Sheldon Field at around 7:15 PM.

Thanks to everyone for a super-fun intro ride season!

After some pretty nasty weather while I was away the last three Tuesdays, I was happy to see a very pleasant night for a hillclimb. This resulted in a good turnout of 14 riders.

Thanks so much to Jonathan OK for doing a spectacular job of running these events in my absence. I tried to talk him into taking over the reporting duties while we were at the starting line tonight but he wasn't buying it. I even tried extreme flattery.

There were a whopping 6 PRs tonight - Luke by 3:04, Garret by 1:06, Ryan by 0:56, Richard and Shawn by 0:27 and Mitch by 0:10. Up until yesterday, I liked to tell anyone that would indulge me that I don't like to use my age to make excuses. Since yesterday was my big 70 and since I came in last place and was off my PR by 4:50, that all changes from this point onward!

Sam stays atop the men's hillclimb leaderboard (with Ryan a mere 3 points behind) while Melissa maintains a slim 2 point edge over Madeline. In the Overall men's series, Andy holds a substantial 21 point lead over second place while the women's competition is flipped - Madeline with a 5 point lead over Melissa. There are only 2 time trials and 1 hillclimb left in the season so it's probably going to come down to the wire.

Here are tonight's results:

1. Beau Guenther; Time: 18:30; 18.78 mph; 14 points

2. Ryan Davis; Time: 18:52; 18.41 mph; 13 points

3. Nicolas Amato; Time: 18:54; 18.38 mph; 12 points

4. Luke Sedor-Protti; Time: 19:00; 18.28 mph; 11 points

5. Garret Theberg; Time: 20:46; 16.73 mph; 10 points

6. Mitch Graves; Time: 21:09; 16.43 mph; 9 points

7. Louis Cote; Time: 22:09; 15.68 mph; 8 points

8. Richard McWalter; Time: 22:40; 15.33 mph; 7 points

9. Andy MacDonald; Time: 23:06; 15.04 mph; 6 points

10. Jonathan O'Keeffe; Time: 23:36; 14.72 mph; 5 points

11. Madeline Nagy; Time: 23:38; 14.7 mph; 4 points

12. Melissa Warwick; Time: 24:09; 14.39 mph; 3 points

13. Shawn Lakota; Time: 25:08; 13.82 mph; 2 points

14. David Goodwin; Time: 26:52; 12.93 mph; 1 points

Next Tuesday is the Deerfield time trial.

Justin Eichenlaub

Pronouns: he/him

Age: 43

Town: Easthampton

NCC Member Since: 2018

Justin: The History

Where are you from? 

Erie, PA

How did you first get into cycling?

Riding bikes from an early age in the City of Erie where I grew up thanks to my parents getting me started and teaching me how to ride. My house was on a gravel alleyway, which I loved, and the alley ran for several blocks. We ran alley races when I was young, stationing kids at each street crossing, so the racer wouldn’t have to stop and look for cars.

Why did you join NCC? 

To be a part of the recreational and competitive cycling community here in the Valley. And to work with NCC on a new cyclocross event, NCC Hydra Cross, which we first launched in 2019.

What type of riding do you do?

All kinds–from around town utility cycling, to community, to training and racing bikes. 

You’ve been putting on NCC’s Hydra Cross race in Holyoke for six years now. How did you get started with that? 

There’s so much cyclocross in Western Mass now (check out @rivervalleycx) but six or seven years ago there wasn’t so much–there was demand for more local races. Hydra Cross started with the desire to create a new race closer to home for our friends and community. Mike Marques (my co-promoter) and I had got into racing cross together in Hartford years before and decided to put our own event together in Holyoke. 

What do you want people to know about the event?  

Hydra Cross is such a special, grassroots event. The vibe is positive and supportive and welcoming. People really love our race and are always surprised by how fun (and hilly!) the course is. The City of Holyoke and its Parks and Rec Department have always been so welcoming and supportive of this event. If you haven’t been before, come on out and see for yourself this year! 

What cycling accomplishments mean the most to you? 

Helping others get into the sport has meant the most to me. I’ve had the opportunity to do that through our race and intro clinic, by helping organize skills clinics through the club, and in coaching others at humanisticcoaching.com. I really love using what I’ve learned to help others pursue their goals on the bike.

Justin’s Favorites

What’s your favorite place to ride?

Easthampton’s mountain bike trails are in my backyard and are often hard to beat. I’ve grown to love Sawmill as well, and my favorite road loop is up to Conway and back.

Favorite ride snack? 

1:1 glucose:fructose drink mix lol….no hmmm twizzlers

Favorite piece of cycling gear?

USWE hydration pack

What is your favorite NCC group ride or event?

Wednesday Night Ride

What do you want people to know about the event?  

Mr. Inbetween 

Who is your favorite professional cyclist? 

Evie Richards

Justin Off the Bike

What do you do when not on your bike? 

I teach English and research classes at a public high school in Springfield

What do you do for fun?

Spend time with my daughter and family

What is your favorite spot in the River Valley? 

Mt. Tom

What’s next for Justin?

What cycling goals do you have for the upcoming year? 

I’ve been focused on competing in the Race Day XC series this year, which has been fun.

What’s on your cycling bucket list? 

Always more mountain biking, and a mountain bike stage race some day

What are your hopes for NCC/the cycling community in the River Valley? 

To continue growing the sport among youth and adult riders

How can people connect with you?

Email: eichenlaub@gmail.com

Hydra Cross: bikereg.com/hydracross

Humanistic Coaching website 

Humanistic Coaching Instagram

Six of our Monday-night "regulars" joined me tonight on a gorgeous late-summer evening, with just a hint of fall crispness in the air. Adam, Beth, James, Jerome, Shelby, and Tony have been around the block a few times, so we skipped over the usual pre-ride road instructions, and instead spent some time talking about nutrition and hydration, along with emphasizing the importance of signing up for rides on the RideWithGPS Events Page (it helps the ride leader plan on who is coming, and it helps with getting in touch with people if anything goes wrong during the ride).

With all of that out of the way, we hit the road, rolling over the bike path bridge into Hadley, where we soon encountered a powered paraglider soaring overhead, a cool sight.

Further up Route 47, after hearing that Beth and James were preparing for next weekend's D2R2, I decided to give them a taste of dirt by taking a brief detour on Shattuck Road through Russelville. This featured some great farm scenery and a couple of nice tobacco barns, but I don't think Shelby approved of the dirt.

After rolling south on Maple Street, we tackled the short but steep climb on Breckinridge Road, where several PRs were set, including Shelby beating her best time on the climb by 15 seconds -- great work! We enjoyed the descent down to Rocky Hill Road, and then headed back to the start on the bike path, stopping for a quick photo op on the bridge.

We finished up back at Sheldon Field at about 7:05 PM with 17 miles, averaging about 12.5 mph.

Next week will be our last Monday night ride of the summer -- hope to see you there!

5 riders today, Justine, Jaime Davila, Jim B, Jonathan Wallender and Kent Johnson. We rode  40 miles and 1,000 feet of climbing from Keyes street in Florence to Old Deerfield, (where Jim had never been), and back. We took a break at the Deerfield convenience store:(really nice proprietor) and discussed the pros and cons of various protein bars ( scintillating!)

Jim B lives in Alexandria VA and is visiting his parents in West Springfield. He googled local riding clubs and found NCC!! He is also skilled at taking pictures from a moving bicycle ( I dont recommend this - but he got some good ones!).  the weather was amazing, fresh, sunny, 70 degrees, and though there was a head wind going out, we had a light tailwind the whole way home. Fast pace for this C ride, averaging 15.1 mph with lots of teamwork!