My new strategy for all future hillclimbs is to show up at the start, complain how fat and slow I’ve become, how unlubricated my chain is, how I hadn’t shaved my legs in several years, how both of my tires were so low on air that they were rimming out and how I had to wear a kit 5 sizes too big because all I had access to were the clothes from Paul Bunyan’s closet. Oh, and then come in second.
I think the 5 pm folks (there were 14 of us) got a bum steer with the wind tonight. There was some assist but by the time I rode back to Sunderland at 5:45, it was all I could do to keep from getting blown down to Chicopee!
The advantage of having hail for the descent of today’s hillclimb was that it wasn’t as wet as rain. The disadvantage was that it hurt our faces.
We had some decent pavement after Deerfield’s Highway Department put in some effort last year to fix up the deep crevasses on River Road. I think maybe one too many search and rescue missions were sent to find lost cyclists and it just became cheaper to fix it.
So the downside of the 5 pm start time for the Tuesday night TT/HC series was in full cry this evening – rush hour traffic up the hill from Amherst and Leverett to Shutesbury and beyond was palpable.
Definitely blustery, definitely warm, definitely dry so 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!
We had 22 folks do the hill climb tonight. I’m trying to change the start time under the “Events” pulldown for the TT/HC series from 6 pm to 5 pm but that hasn’t happened yet. My apologies to those who showed up at 6.
I’m guessing everyone had a pretty reasonable mostly tail or cross-tail wind for the time trial today. I wasn’t able to join the group going off at 5 pm so ended up riding around noon. The last two miles were a bit dicey but the ride back to Sunderland was just awful!
