Day 33: Keene, New Hampshire to Salisbury Beach, Massachussetts

Distance: 115 miles
Average Speed: 17.9 mph
Terrain: Hilly. 5000 feet of climbing. Don’t coasts usually have a plain?
Winds: Light and generally favorable. Warm.

First, sorry about the delay. I was busy late into the evening last night. Second, if you thought this was going to be the big “What Did It All Mean” final post, it won’t be that. That’s a bit more complex. A lot of what it all meant depends on what I do now, and I’m not up for thinking too deeply about that until after the Memorial Day weekend. I swear I will write it up and post it, though. That’s the real conclusion, and it should be a barn burner. I think it starts with a consideration of what happens when after spending 10 years of your life doing something that was hard for you only because you had to convince yourself you could stand doing it, you spend a month doing the hardest thing you could ever imagine loving.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about the day. After a 3 mile cruise through the town of Keene, we started climbing again and kept climbing. What the hell? This is no Carolina. Like 50 miles from the coast, and I’m doing a one mile 20% grade up the moronically named Joe English Road. Sounds more like a brand of undershirt to me. The lunch SAG came up in Manchester at about 70 miles. I was on my own off the front again so I was the first to discover that the road that was going to take us over the interstate no longer went over the interstate but instead terminated in a concrete barrier. I made the call to the ride leader, and he held everybody else at the lunch SAG until he could figure out a way to get them through. At one point, the following exchange occurred.

Mike: “Okay, you have to go north and find Candia Road to 121. Pull out your map and I’ll give you the turns.”
Andy: “Uh. That cue sheet you gave us today was like 5 pages long so I threw out the maps.” I was tired, and we were climbing. I wasn’t carrying anything I didn’t need.
Mike: “Gee. I guess that seems like a pretty dumb decision now.” Mike is good with wisdom like that.

Anyway, young first time mothers with baby carriages got me on a route that intersected me with the planned route. Being accosted by a man in lycra on a bike just isn’t that intimidating. I saw the tail end of the main group shoot through the rotary just as I was getting back on path.

Between getting unlost and it being the last half of the last day and sucking down gels at an unrationed rate, I was pure adrenaline the rest of the way. Well, almost. The route was still rolling like a mother through these lovely New England towns. I had passed everyone on the road and was feeling great. From mile 75 to mile 105, I think I averaged about 22 mph over rollers. I was out of the saddle with every rise and taking everything that went up as a power climb. I’ve never been this strong in my life. I was raging, and Sexybike felt light as a feather.

When I got to the rendezvous point, I had to wait 30 minutes for the next group in. We rode the last ten miles to the beach at tourist pace. And that is a fitting way to introduce the video.