I think I kept face (Alex, you can let me know), but I was just holding it together at the end there. Stupid, really. Long, noncompetitive bike rides are as much if not more (and really: more) about how you feed yourself (what we in the industry call "nutrition") than your actual fitness. You need the fitness to do the miles, of course, but how you do them is really more a matter of inputs and outputs, fuel-in to watts-out. I sort of fucked up the fuel-in part.

Apparently it had been on the calendar. I checked afterward and, sure enough, there it was: "100k?" spread across Saturday and Sunday. I’d forgotten, though, mostly living during the week by my work calendar and doing as little calendar-checking on the weekends. But there it was, and Alex called it in. It was going to be cold but not that cold, which is to say, we were going to be just above freezing for the majority of the ride. In February I’ll take it. We said Sunday, picked a route — the Dover Ponyhenge permanent — and I thought to myself: you know what? My fitness isn’t too bad.

This was Friday or Saturday (maybe Saturday). I didn’t super have time to go to the store for supplies due to some at-home obligations and a dinner that night, but I’d been interesting in trying this "Trash Juice,"[1] which is essentially just dumping white sugar into your water bottle. I added a squeeze of lime and some salt to make it more like fake Gatorade. It tasted pretty good! I had a protein bar saved for after the ride, another bottle full, I figured, since this is New England, there would be a Dunks[2] on the route (there was), and I had saved a single "goo" energy gel packet thing from last summer’s D2R2. It was only about one month expired, but I ended up forgetting I had it at the end anyway.

Aside

On the Tuesday Morning Coffee Ride this week Adam, who I’ve mentioned writing up other randonneuring rides, was asking me an Young Tom about road trip planning, as he and I have both done more road tripping. We had different styles but both were of the "vague plan" camp, with the note that I strongly suggested (and I think Tom agreed) that they figure out where they were going to stay earlier in the day than later, ideally before anybody got tired (Adam will be traveling with his wife and their nine year old — WHEN DID THE KID TURN NINE?! COVID-time brain never fucks me up as bad as it does when it comes to kids' birthdays.)

What is true in road trips is also true in randonneuring: you don’t want to have to make decisions when you’re tired. It makes for poor decisions. Like forgetting that you have an extra energy gel thing. But I digress.

We met in Belmont Center for a quick coffee (and I had a croissant) and then shoved off to "warm up" by climbing "the" Belmont hill starting on the hard side and yes, by the end, we were warm. Up and around through the usual route to get over to Lincoln, MA, by way of Trapelo Rd but with a sneaky early left turn before you actually get to old Lincoln center to ride around the reservoir, which was gorgeous.

I think, if I decide to do more of these ride posts, I really ought to start taking pictures. Alas.

The scenery was beautiful and typical wealthy suburb Boston. We giggled at first at all of the "Rezoning is Not a Development Plan" signs in Wellesley, and then I got kind of mad about it, given both the recent vote in Milton and my general feelings about the NIMBYs in greater Boston. Like, you’re all for progress when it comes to gay marriage and whatever, but God forbid more people move into your little fucking wealthy walled garden. Like the developers wouldn’t mostly be putting in fucking luxury condos anyway.

All of which is to say Alex and I had many philosophical-political discussions and I think, as usual, we solved all the problems on the bike ride, but alas: nobody will give us the power to do anything about them, oh well.

We hit the Dunks down in Dover, Alex had a sandwich and I had some tater tots,[3] and headed further off to the turnaround by the Farm Pond, which, true to name, was farmy and pretty. We rode on and up through Natick and Wayland and back up to Ponyhenge, and apparently I did take a picture:[4]

Ponyhenge with Bike

There was a family with some kids and one of the kids was like, "Hey ponies, are you ready to be introduced to…​ torture?!" and then he started, like, kicking them or something (all poor mom wanted to do was take a cute picture), and I was all like "Jesus," but Alex, who is a middle school teacher, was more like "Eh, that’s actually developmentally appropriate," and I do not hang out with children very much, save for my friend’s baby who is only like six months. Anyway.

We made it back up through to familiar territory and I started cramping a little bit again. I’d neglected to refill at the Dunks and was drinking more water than maybe I’d anticipated (I usually don’t drink all that much when it’s cold, but given that one of the water bottles was my "Trash Juice" I was slugging it down for the carbs). A little under-prepared, even if otherwise I was feeling good so far as my fitness. We refilled at a Cumby’s[5] in Lexington and then proceeded up through to Winchester and then proceeded back down into Belmont from there. With the resupply I was feeling a little better but not great, but we did make it through. I would just be much more sore on Monday than I would expect to be (certainly more sore than I’d expect to be in-season after "only" 100k, or ~61 miles). But — that’s what the early season is for: miles. Slow, steady miles.

Our time was nothing to write home about, but it got done and now we’re one month into a hypothetical P-12 attempt. Adam’s already a couple months ahead of us, but we’ll see. We rode a ton of 100ks last summer, felt like, and it’s a nice way to keep the legs spinning. In theory I hope to do another "Super Randonneur" series this summer, so the legs got to spin.

But to return to the point that I have certainly lost somewhere along the way: while fitness is important, other aspects of the ride (i.e., eating) as just as if not more important, and so these long rides are training those aspect as much as they are training the legs and lungs. So if I were to give myself a status check-in at this point in the season: legs and lungs OK, everything else Could Use Improvement.

But that’s what the next few months are for.

1. For whatever reason, The Radavist doesn’t believe in id attributes on headings, so you have to scroll or search for the "Trash Juice" heading.
2. The ad was so good.
3. Apparently they are very good energy sources! (Though probably Dunks ones are not quite as effective…​)
4. Oof, but does it look bad in black and white! Oh well. Hover to reveal the non-filtered picture.
5. Cumberland Farms gas station, a common resupply station.