Not a Recovery Ride!

Distance: 40.2 mi.

Time: 1:58:40

Avg. speed: 20.3 mph

Weather: 63-75º, 97-71% humidity, wind N1-NNW3, sunny

Billed not only as "easy" but "EASY" (the all-caps emphasis courtesy Steve K), todays 2 hour ride turned out to be a very fun no-big-climbs rollery stomp around Stow, Acton, Littleton, Chelmsford, Carlisle, Concord and back.

Let's see if I can get the head count correct here: Steve K, Gary S, Vic, Cort, Chris, Smudger, Pattie, Della, Scott S, Len, Doug, Bob C and myself (sorry for any omissions!). That's 13 riders out of Stow Plaza a few minutes after 7 a.m. onto the still-wet roads heading up into Boxboro.

I don't think we even did one mile of "warm up" when the pace picked up to 20+ mph, Smudger and I in front of a double paceline. By the time we got to Hill Road in Boxboro, there was quite a bit of chuckling about how "easy" we were taking it. It seemed like we were soft pedaling the flats/descents but hammering any rise in the road pretty hard. No real complaints from anybody though.

I was feeling surprisingly robust, despite yesterday's effort – I kept waiting for my legs to remind me that had put in nearly 85 miles a day earlier, but no such alarm was raised.

As we wound our way into Chelmsford/Carlisle, the road conditions deteriorated considerably. I'm pretty sure we left a glittering trail of tooth fillings along that stretch of road, but nobody flatted despite the punishment our tires were taking.

In Concord, we came down River Road/Monument Street at about 27 mph with someone noting how nice it was to go up that last climb on Monument with a leadout for a change rather than alone, as one has to do it during the Charlie Baker TT on that same road.

After a brief nature break in Concord Center, we wound our way through West Concord and when we hit Rte. 27, the group headed back down to Red Acre Road for the Stow Plaza parking lot while I went straight home down 27.

⌘