I’m told it is goofy or “Fred” to talk about mileage (ascent = okay, but not mileage). I’m going to anyway b/c I’m excited about this month’s milestone of 630 miles.

Today’s metric century helped. With friends I rode from Weston to the New Hampshire border, 65 miles round trip with 2000″ of climbing.

here’s the embedded version where you can see just how long it took us…one of my riding buddies showed up on a mountain bike, which really slowed him down.

but we finally made it!

Yesterday’s plan was to do a 75-mile loop from Westwood to Plymouth Rock as training for the MassBike Summer Century a few weeks from now. To my great surprise, I had plenty of energy left at the end, so I decided to push another 25 miles to make it my first century.

The 7:47 time is a bit misleading, as I realized halfway though that I hadn’t set the auto-stop feature on my Garmin. It was actually 7:32 in the saddle, starting a little before 6am finishing a bit after 3pm. Not particularly fast, though it was my first time and my riding buddy struggled a bit on the way back from Plymouth so we had to stop and rest (he did not do the last 25 with me).

Things I learned on this ride:
* get a haircut before a long ride on a hot day. when I took off my helmet, I looked ridiculous!
* carb-loading the night before really works. I had a plate full of macaroni salad for dinner on Friday, and then a protein fest when I woke up (eggs + chicken sausage). felt a bit stuffed, but I didn’t bonk
* bring an extra jersey. after hours in the hot sun, it was refreshing to change shirts. interestingly, I found the cheapo mesh jersey from EMS much more comfortable than the “real” jersey I had
* avoid towns on long rides. stoplights are not your friend; Brockton was miserable
* G2 is an awesome energy drink. much less sugar than the original Gatorade, but doesn’t leave you empty like Powerade Zero does

my parents told me never to hitchhike, or pick up hitchhikers. “they might have a knife! or a gun!” so I’ve never picked up a hitchhiker in my 40 years.

today’s experience might change that. I was about halfway home from a loop to Providence when I had a breakdown (spoke) and couldn’t continue. as you can see on the map below, I stopped about 18 miles short of making it back home. my riding buddy said he would come back for me, but I knew that would be a couple of hours.

So there I was carrying my bike up the hill when a couple in a truck with a massive trailer pulled up to ask if I needed a ride. to my astonishment, they drove me nearly 15 miles from Wrentham to Landry’s in Norwood, whereas they were headed to Brockton. i was overwhelmed by their generosity

and that wasn’t the only nice part of the day. the view of the water from India Point Park in downtown Providence was divine!

was all excited to do a 75-mile winding loop from Wayland to downtown Boston. first half went great, then the rain started to fall. options were to wait out the rain or take the train home to Westwood.

unfortunately I had forgotten my rain jacket at home. the rain seemed to come and go, but I didn’t want to get caught in a total downpour as the forecast had predicted thundershowers all afternoon and evening.

so we took the train home. of course it was clear skies when we got there. left me pretty upset, b/c I can’t bike commute this week due to camp schedules & so it would’ve been a perfect week to recover from a longer ride…the 40 miles we did do didn’t have much of an effect. maybe I”ll get on the trainer this afternoon while watching TdF reruns…

took someone’s advice and left home before 6am to try my 13-mile commute without much traffic.

what a revelation – cut nearly 10 minutes off my time and boosted my average speed by 2 mph.

of course maybe it helped that I was on my road bike and wasn’t carrying the laptop … will have to try this again some morning on the commuter bike, fully loaded

thanks for BikeForums member “Jim from Boston” for suggesting the early-morning strategy!