Rasputitsa Training Camp II

Team Shad April 10, 2016

The second and last training run for Team Shad, 32 miles through forest and ravines and up steep hills in Wendell, Shutesbury, and Montague. 2500+ elevation, not exactly the Rasputitsa simulation we'd aimed for but in the end it was enough. Coming less than 24 hours after yesterday's 42 mile road ride, I hadn't fully recovered so the 32 hard miles today were enough. The Virginian felt the same, having thrashed himself good on Friday.

A chilled sunny day, high 30s early on and mid 40s at the high point of the mid afternoon, those puffy white clouds accentuating the blueness of the sky. Miles of forest roads, conifer stands along either side casting shadowed patterns on moist way paths. Creeks flowing alongside in audible granite'y gush. Wendell State Forest roads loose packed gravel, steep, demanding ascents that nearly broke each of us, but didn't

Through the forest alongside beaver ponds

Eventually we were stymied by the run-off from a beaver pond, far down New Boston Rd (which sounds like a real road but is really an old cart path through the woods). With recent rains and snow melt, the waterways are high and the result, for us, was an impasse we could not get around. So we altered our coursee on the fly, went back up to Mount Mineral Road and eventually up the crazy long climb of Wendell Rd, hard-packed clay that, at times, felt like pedaling on a gym floor.

The Virginian, getting it done