D2R2 2017 - A Week to Go

Muschopauge Rd, Rutland, MA
August 12, 1017

With just a week to go before the D2R2, I did my longest ride of the season, a 51 mile road ride. That's roughly half of the 160K that's on tap starting at 7:00 AM next Saturday. Was this ride any indication of where I am, form-wise? Yes, and no.

I rode hard, averaged over 15 mph solo, but eschewed climbing Mount Wachusett even though I skirted the base and was well-placed to make a go for the summit. It seemed too much. I never felt close to bonking but by the time I got back to Shad Quarters, I was ready to get off the bike and tuck into a cold Haze from Tree House Brewery. And into a 16 oz grilled ribeye. 

It's been a weird year for Team Shad. Existential angst, questions of retirement, the possibility of disbanding, pressure from the Caviar Mafia of Baku, an abandoned Rasputitsa, long stretches of ennui and disinterest. All of that, coupled with last year's epic fail on East Road and the Three Stooges-like buffoonery that ensued, magnifies the importance of this year's edition. 
Dubstoevsky and Team Shad seek redemption.

But will we achieve it? Each edition of the D2R2 poses new challenges. Last year's Mystery Ride, with its horrendous stretches of un-rideable forest road and the oppressive heat, proved insurmountable for many, Team Shad included. Then there was the first year of Team Shad's participation in the event when Wing Nut powered ahead and dropped Dubstoevsky on a long grinding climb, leaving D-Evsky on his own to make a wrong turn, become completely disoriented and end up on a different course altogether.

But the years in between those two mishaps provided Team Shad the opportunity to shine. Three solid years, 2013, 2014, and 2015 saw the Shad performing at a high level. Team cohesion, strong, disciplined training, and prime weather conditions added up to peak performances.

But the six months prior to this year's edition have been anything but cohesive. Wretched stretches of spring weather (read, most of March and April) rendered January and February's six-ride-each-month moot. By late May, when Dubstoevsky finally began to log some miles, the season was in disarray and even participation in the D2R2 seemed up in the air. Training rides were of short duration. Twenty miles. Fifteen. #Sad.

Team Shad

But now here we are. And though I, Dubstoevsky, am generally not a water glass half full kind of guy, I have looked for some positives from these past six tumultuous months. The most important reed of hope to which I cling is the simple fact that I'm fresher this year. This, I deem major.

Last year, the Mystery Ride was my 78th ride of the season. Team Shad drove me like a locomotive. This year, the D2R2 will be only my 45th ride of the year. Though that's a sad and disappointing stat in one regard, in another it suggests that I have the strength of 25 un-ridden rides in my legs.

I'm counting on needing them come Saturday.

George Street Challenge 2017 Results

The results are in!

George Street Challenge 2017

Note that Dubstoevsky had to enter this challenge under an alias, Patrick Warner, in the men's 50-59 age group. The name, cycling historians and enthusiasts of arcane lore will know, is a loose Anglicization of the name of the eccentric Franco-Teutonic cyclist of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Patrique von Bongwarren. 

von Bongwarren family crest

The von Bongwarren clan, the result of the unlikely coupling of an aristocratic Prussian family and a down-at-the-barricades Alsatian brood, might have faded into ancestral obscurity if not for the cycling exploits of Patrique, the third son of Klaus & Simone von Bongwarren. 

Patrique, at age 13, entered the 1893 youth edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège (minimum age was 16 but young Patrique bluffed his way in), won the race, and went on to be an perennial power in the spring classics. Known for his raw bursts of acceleration on steep climbs, and for his voracious thirst for Belgian abbey ale (he filled his bidet with it), Patrique von Bongwarren was a colorful character as well as a relentless competitor.

At the start of the 1907 season, however, he shocked his fans and the cycling world by announcing his retirement from the sport. Shortly thereafter, he abandoned his inherited chateau, gave away his acclaimed wine collection, and moved to southern California to farm pomegranates. 

See George Street Challenge 2017 for the recap.

George Street Challenge 2017

Starting Line
July 23, 2017
George St from Main St, Worcester, Mass

The official results have not been posted yet as I, Dubstoevsky, sit at Shad Bistro's only table typing up this recap of this morning's George Street Challenge, "the shortest race in America." It's essentially an uphill time trial that lasts (if you're pretty good) about 30 seconds or less, and if you're not all about climbing, then maybe you'll use a minute to get to the top. It's basically a 500 foot uphill sprint with a 17% average gradient. 

The competition was intense.

In a category all his own

Though despite (as mentioned) the International Association of Short Bike Races' officially sanctioned results have not yet been posted, we do know a few things about today's event with certainty.

Cello Dude

We know that a man with a cello strapped to his back took the challenge. We learned that the rider is a musician with a Mexican orchestra and that he never lets the cello out of his sight.

We know that the bright yellow pedicab ridden by an implacable Jamaican dude tenaciously and calmly peddled to the top, albeit with a pause or two en route. His ride was a crowd favorite.

We know the crowd was epic. Not just cyclists cheering on each other, but a whole line up of curious onlookers who lined the street and cheered with enthusiasm. There were cowbells and air horns. Everyone clapped and yelled.

We know that Dubstoevsky acquitted himself well and did not, as he did last year accidentally, stamp too hard on the pedals at the get-go, causing a slight wheelie; instead, this year, he caught the rhythm of the bike holder's release and eased into his launch with control. Underway smoothly, he hit it full force and powered upwards digging hard, downshifting at about the 3/4 mark, right at the slope's uptick, churning and thrashing the cranks to the line.

Are you kidding me?

Dubstoevsky's result? 31.62 seconds, nearly two seconds ahead of last year's result of 33.38. Sweet!

Which is ironic, actually, as I'd felt pretty crappy this morning, tired, drained from a migraine headache yesterday. My legs felt thick and unmotivated, stubborn. I timed my pre-race practice ride up at 47 seconds. I wasn't going all out but I didn't feel very powerful at all. I thought, well, fuck it, you're signed up so give it your best shot. If your legs fail, so be it.

But they didn't. 

So allez! Yes, we can surprise ourselves. 

***

Post Script: The results are in. 

Hugo and the Tour

Hugo and the Tour 2017

The big hairy Viking cat named Huguenot Torte, or just plain Hugo, or even, in the vernacular, The Monster (because he has unequivocally been determined to be a Love Monster), has here climbed into my lap and settled down to watch the Tour de France with me and discuss the various nuances, controversies, and twists & turns that have made this year's Grand Boucle so far; the Sagan/Cavendish imbroglio (Hugo is in Sagan's camp on that one), the brute Nacer Bohnanni and his innate villainy, Aru's attack mentality, the annual disappointment of the Colombian Enigma, Nairo (rhymes with Cairo) Quintana, whether anyone can beat Marcel Kittel in a sprint, the great job the NBC broadcast team is doing (Phil, Paul, Bobke, Christian V, the Mighty Jens Voight, the hapless Steve Porino, the intrepid Steve Schlanger, and the anchor, a classic strong-jawed American sportscaster with a deep voice and an air of avuncular security whose name I cannot remember). Hugo, as it turns out, is an aficionado of the Grand Tours in general but the mighty French leg in particular. Being something of a gourmond, he's asking for escargot tonight instead of the organic duck in beef gravy or the rabbit pate that he's used to. Poor Hugo. We have no escargot.

Clawing through Ennui

Tour de France 2017

I have not been dormant. I have not wrapped myself into a fetal cocoon and drawn the shades. Nope. It is July. The Tour de France is underway, fantastic weather has returned, and Dubstoevsky has been slowly but surely clawing his way back into shape. It has taken a suitcase of commitment to do so but the effort seems to be paying off.

Ah, July. Birth month. Humidity. Sunshine. Thunderstorms. The 4th of July. Long days. Warm nights. The Tour. 

4th of July
Kimball's Ice Cream, Lancaster, MA

The New England weather has shifted over the last two months. Two thirds of the days have been sunny, pleasant, not that windy, and the other third have been overcast and some semblance of rainy. Hot and dry followed by cool and rainy. Perfect. The landscape is lush and green, the air pleasantly thick and moist. We've had an abundance of evening masterpieces when the rich descending sunlight slants across the neighborhood illuminating the giant verdant trees and the many old dignified buildings built by skilled hands.

These are introspective days. Team Shad has splintered into a thousand cosmic thoughts. Dubstoevsky is now a team unto himself. Wing Nut, Assassin for Hire, freelances out of the wilds of the greater Deerfield drainage. He's thrashing the competition in the Big Hills of Conway, Rowe, Colrain, Shelburne Falls, et fucking cetera. I Ward has disappeared in the forests of Montague. 

These developments are not unexpected. It was a rag tag shoestring trio to begin with, a trio of eclectic mirage and squawk. Like the U.S.A. itself in a way. The important thing now is to move forward. 

June

June 1st. Two rides in May. One in April. It's been an appalling stretch off the bike. And yet. 

And yet June arrives, and summer yawns ahead. Nothing guaranteed. Team Shad has imploded, shattered to pieces, splintered across the universe. In truth, we have simply dissipated, been absorbed into the greater Ether Sphere of solitary endeavor. 

Just like that, the cohesion of focus has gone missing. Now, there is only the existential question of why one does what one does.

I, Dubstoevsky, make no pretense of being able to answer that koan. I, like everyone else, am simply flailing away on the meat wheel of life, uninformed, un-mollified, and making it up as I go along.

June 1, 2017 Cherry Valley, MA

Sure, the Caviar Sponsorship never worked out, the suitcases of cash never arrived, the 'royal treatment' has new meaning, and Team Shad is now a footnote in the mesmerizing text that is Small 'Big Time' Time Cycling.

Fuck it. Days like today (June 1st) occur after weeks of Armageddon and cloud cover.

But there are other things that happen as well, other catastrophes and failings. We are mortal, and small, and at the mercy of circumstance. We profess confidence but we're really wondering what the fuck is happening, and why the fuck is it happening NOW. And there are no answers. 

For Dubstoevsky, there is the bike, the road, the world.

Approaching Amsterdam, from the bow of the Koningsdam
Sunday, May 21, 2017

Shadian Shift

Call me Dubstoevsky. 

For five years I have labored like a Welsh shepherd for Team Shad. Rain, snow, blazing sun, rocky tarmac, long tortuous ascents in the wake of the Virginian's unwashed racing kit. I have ridden with teammates, ridden with the Badger, and I have ridden solo along little-traveled back roads past dilapidated houses that bring to mind lurid crimes from the 1940s. 

I have not complained. I have sluiced the gruel of disciplined cycling like a camel at a palm nut oasis, snout deep in the sloppy trough. 

Not for glory, not for prizes and adulation, not for the sponsors with their gold pens and advertising campaigns have I ridden; not for the right to wear the lapel pin of a secret society nor to receive the teddy bear of indifference from a hairy-armed podium wench have I labored hour after hour in the saddle. Not for the worthless contract I signed with the rug merchants and caviar hucksters from Odessa and Baku have I dedicated myself to churning the cranks week in and week out, season after season.

No, I have mounted the holy bicycle again and again like a Tibetan lama in Himalayan meditation, have supplanted the zabuton with a racing saddle, have burned the magic incense and faithfully waved the smoldering brass censer, all with singularity of purpose: to mine the ore of self-awareness and extract the diamond shards of essential wisdom.

Here's the point. Team Shad has withdrawn from the Rasputitsa. In fact, the entire season is now a question mark. While Dubstoevsky struggles with the existential angst of Life itself, the Virginian erodes the hillsides of western Mass with his relentless pedaling. I Ward has disappeared into Never Ever Land. We have become our own planets spiraling away from the gravitational force that heretofore cohered our imaginary peloton.

Team Shad was always an amalgamation of hubris, intemperance, hi-jinx, and Dada. With the world at large erupting into madness, with the armies of Gog & Magog stomping around the planet, the question of what becomes of the team seems relatively unimportant. We are but shad coursing up a vast river toward uncertain spawning grounds and must now navigate the watery chaos individually.

I admit it, I am relieved to bag the Rasputitsa. Despite having six solid rides in each January and February, March came along and dealt a weather blow to my training regimen and only now does the wretched spate of wintery bluster seem to finally have broken; only now does there seem any likelihood of dependably conducive training conditions persisting. I managed my first legitimate ride in weeks just a few days ago. I refuse to go to East Burke just to suffer.

But all that no longer matters. What's done is done. The only target on the calendar now is the D2R2, a distant four and a half months in the future. 

Adopting a new Zen attitude toward The Ride and having cast off the shackles of Team Shad's Azerbaijani taskmasters, I, Dubstoevsky, am now free to determine my own course of action, train at my own pace. 

I am now free to journey into my own cycling future. 

I can don a hair shirt racing jersey emblazoned with a cycling Shaolin warrior shad and cycle down the road of no expectations. 

I can huff the meditation and chant a silly litany in poetic cadence.

There once was a shad on a bike,
a pedaling piscine tyke
who got a bit radical
and took a sabbatical 
to go off and do as he liked.