Rasputitsa Training Camp, Day 1

Team Shad team cars

With a little less than a month before the Rasputitsa, Team Shad met in Orange, Massachusetts, a town clearly misnamed as there is nothing bright or wholesome about the place; it is, in fact, desolate & run down, a small enclave far from anything meaningful. But the parking was convenient, in a mostly empty lot next to the Honest Weight Brewery, and peeing into the ditch separating the lot from the railroad tracks was convenient.

We are a team of two: Dubstoevsky, Team Leader, and The Virginian, stalwart assassin & congenial cycling mensch whose generosity is boundless and whose killer instinct is unpredictable. He is, as I've long said, the man you want on your team.

Downtown Orange, on the way out

We opted to ride out of Orange because we'd explored the roads to the north of there before, last November on road bikes. On that ride we'd ended up doing a fair amount of hard-packed dirt, more than we'd wanted to at the time. However, for Rasputitsa Training Camp, that's exactly what we wanted, miles of packed dirt roads, and maybe some wood roads and trails of various conditions. We wanted to simulate at least some of the conditions that we're sure to encounter at The Rasp. We weren't disappointed.

Oxbow Rd, Orange
Dirt just 1.5 miles into the ride

Several righteous stretches of clay-sand-packed hill roads swept us along Oxbow Rd and Pine Hill Rd and Town Farm Rd, still bright sun, shadows from the naked hardwood, the day hinting at warmth though not quite getting there. The Virginian and I pushed each other. We talked about strategy for the Rasp and how to approach it. I offered him free rein; if he wanted to launch ahead and get his best time, I wouldn't hold him back. We did agree that we wouldn't attack each other.

But that wouldn't be true on a training day so I kept a wary eye open and reeled him back after a couple friendly launches.

Perfect conditions

The Virginian on the attack

Dubstoevsky restoring order

Eventually, we exited the back country dirt packed roads and plunged into the woods. Conditions deteriorated quickly.

We reminded ourselves that decades-ago we had gone night mountain biking together, on several occasions. "In the winter" The Virginian added.

Today, we were on a woods track that appeared as a dotted line labeled Royalston Rd on the photocopied page from the NH Gazetteer I'd brought along. We hoped the track would connect back up with North Main St near the NH border, but in a way it didn't matter because this was real Rasputitsa terrain. We reassured ourselves that it would have to end up somewhere (as if that weren't a universal truism of every trail anyway).

Entering the forest

Mountain biking skills preferred

Crunching through the icy forest run-off

At one point we came to a frozen-over set of tire ruts on a logging road. We exploded through them like stampeding mastodons, shattering the thick ice into a thousand diamond shards and sending a tsunami of muddy water into the beaver marsh on either side. Then we posed like Zeus and Thor to immortalize the moment.

We leave shattered ruts in our wake

Full disclosure: ATVs had mashed through the ice ruts; we gingerly negotiated our way around the edges. The day was far too cold to risk getting wet. I'd even had second thoughts riding up the middle of the old abandoned wood road, draining as it was with an inch or more of water sluicing its way through icy, pebbled crust; one wrong tire turn and I'd be down. Luckily, that never came to pass.

Unluckily, I found myself quite chilled for much of the first half of the ride. Initial climbing early on caused me to break a sweat; then a fair amount of descending on pavement cooled me down quickly. For the second ride in a row, I'd misjudged my layers. Today, I could have used a 4th layer, or perhaps even just a brown paper shopping bag against my chest - I'd consciously eschewed it today, thinking that the Gore base layer, the fleece long-sleeve middle garment, and the thick neoprene Gore anti-wind top layer would be sufficient. It wasn't. When we finally got back to the team cars, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees, but for much of the ride it was below that, and, as expected, the day had grown overcast, obscuring any warmth from the wan sun.

But the day was a success. 37.2 miles, almost the length of the Rasp (which is a shade above 40). Three hours and fifteen minutes in the saddle, certainly more pavement than the Rasputitsa and perhaps not quite as challenging terrain over all, but for the first day of training, we were pleased. We'd acquitted ourselves well and concluded that Team Shad is on course for a strong race next Month.