The 600 kilometer (375 mile) brevet is the last of four events in the Boston Brevet Series (http://www.gis.net/~ingle/bbs/), and the last one that I need to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris in August (http://www.audax-club-parisien.com/). Unlike the previous 400K event, there is only one choice for the starting time, 3 AM. Like all the others in the series, the 600K starts and ends at Hanscom Field in Bedford, about fourteen miles from my home in Somerville. That means morning for me starts with the alarm going off at 1:30 AM. I sit up in bed and hear the sound of soft rain on the trees outside my open window. I ask myself if I am really going to attempt to do this or not. I sit for ten minutes debating the question with myself, then get dressed and put on my rain jacket. The introspection has cost me time and it's 2 AM by the time I hit the road, so I have to hussle a bit to make it to Hanscom by 2:45. Since this is the fourth and last event in the series, many of the faces at the start are by now familiar. In particular I see Jules Meunier, one of the riders with whom I finished the 400K, is there. He and I seemed to be about a perfect pace match, so I'm pleased to see him there. Bruce and Tracey Ingle, the ride organizers, hand out the brevet cards, brief us on the road conditions, and we are on our way. Twenty riders start this morning. The tradition on these brevets seems to be that the riders stay in one group until the first checkpoint. This has a number of advantages: the group is more visible in the dark than scattered single riders would be; riders familiar with the route can lead the peloton so that the rest of us don't have to navigate reading our cue sheets by flashlight; and finally, of course, there are the aerodynamic advantages of drafting. Everybody sticks together with two exceptions, a couple that dropped out of the peloton after less than a mile. Either they are pacing themselves very carefully, or they are going to be in trouble. I was not much inclined to draft the riders ahead of me this morning. The rain was steady now, and the roads were saturated. A few of the cyclists were sensible enough to ride with fenders (myself included), but the majority were more weight-conscious and did not. Their rear wheels created rooster-tails six feet high that anyone riding within twenty feet would intersect. I could judge my distance to the next rider pretty well just by the intensity of the sound of drops on my jacket. Nonetheless, I stayed with the peloton even as the rain became more intense. Forty miles into the ride a downpour started, and everything I was wearing soaked through. One rider on a beautiful Rivendell Rambouillet breaks a rear derailleur cable but keeps going on his front triple. The group was making good time heading southwest toward Oxford, Massachusetts, the first checkpoint at 48 miles. By the time we reach it, it is daylight although the skies are still overcast. I am feeling very sleepy, having had less than two hours of sleep the night before, so I grab a cup of coffee at the convenience store whose parking lot serves as our checkpoint. By the time I finish my coffee, most of the fast riders have already departed. That suits me just fine, as their pace would kill me. I spot Jules waiting for me to finish my coffee; that's great, I won't be riding alone this time. An interim solution is being cobbled together for the Rambouillet as Jules and I depart. The next section continues southwest into Connecticut, and although it's only 31 miles it is the hardest section of the brevet. I've cycled across Connecticut numerous times, and with the exception of the roads right along the Long Island sound, there's not a flat mile in the whole state. I had thought that route 169, famous for Pomfret Hill, must be the worst road in the state, but today I would encounter route 171 and Bigelow Hollow. Bigelow Hollow is the worst of a series of steep, long rollers on 171 where you literally go from 48 MPH to 4.8 MPH in about five seconds as you drop off a cliff and then start climbing a wall right after it. Jules and I struggle through the hills, overtaking one rider before reaching the second checkpoint in Willington, Connecticut, where we find another half-dozen. Bruce Ingle, one of the ride organziers, had done the brevet alone the previous week and most of us had read his ride report online. Jules tells me that Bruce had done the next section, 58 miles due north to Bullard Farm in New Salem, Massachusetts, in just under four hours. I look at our average speed for the last thirty miles from the previous checkpoint and think, "No way". We linger at the checkpoint just long enough to drink a Gatorade and then we're off again. Much to my delight, the next section turns out to be not so terrible. Although there are climbs, they are much more gradual than the hills in Connecticut. Riding north means that we are moving more or less parallel to the hilltops, and we start making pretty respectable time. Much of the route on this section is familiar to me, having come through the area just the previous weekend on my way home from a weekend in Ware. When we cross under the Massachusetts Turnpike in Warren, we've done exactly 100 miles since leaving Hanscom Field and it's 10:20 in the morning. I can still remember when 100 miles seemed like a long distance. It's just before one o'clock when Jules and I reach the third checkpoint at Bullard Farm, three hours and 56 minutes after leaving the second checkpoint. The route of the 600K is an "out-and-back" trip to Bellows Falls, Vermont on a very indirect route via Willington, Connecticut. This means that Bullard Farm is both the third and the fifth checkpoint on the ride, and it is also where the "rustic accommodations" for overnighting are provided. This makes for a strange feeling, because although it feels like "you're there", you still have another 100 miles to ride to Bellows Falls and back before you can rest. There are also two summits between New Salem and Bellows Falls: Mount Grace and Mount Pisgah. Tracey Ingle warns us about the climbs and sends us off with a cruel "See you in a hundred miles!" I make it a point to memorize the route we are following because I know we will be coming back after dark and I won't be able to read my cue sheet. It's not difficult, since the 400K brevet followed the same route through this area as does the Boston-Montreal-Boston Randonneur (which runs in three out of four years when there is no Paris-Brest-Paris). I've never ridden the BMB, but the route is marked with arrows painted on the roads. The first climb, Mount Grace, starts soon after leaving New Salem. It's long but not too steep, at least not by Massachusetts standards. After reaching the summit and dropping down the other side we cross into New Hampshire and reach a long stretch of relatively flat riding. It seems like everybody is having a party in their yard along this stretch: we pass at least four or five of them. Sometimes the revelers heckle us and try to provoke a reaction, but neither Jules nor I have the energy to give them that satisfaction. As we're following Route 78 north into New Hampshire, making very good time, I notice that there's a river adjacent to the road, flowing in our direction. That can only mean we're rolling downhill, which means this "flat" section will present us with a climb on the way back to Bullard Farm. We turn onto Route 63 north in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, and immediately hit a wall: Mount Pisgah. A long, slow creep up the hill ensues, we reach the top and then drop down into Chesterfield and ride over some gentle rollers until we reach Route 12 on the Connecticut River. We follow Route 12 and the Connecticut River Valley up to the crossing at Bellows Falls, where we reach the midpoint checkpoint. There are several cyclists there, including one named Glen Reed that Jules and I have been leapfrogging throughout New Hampshire. He's been riding a lightweight bike with a double crank through these hills that have put me in my 28-tooth chainring many times already. It boggles my mind that anyone would try to tackle the 600K without a triple crank, but it probably boggles theirs that I tackle it on a 40 pound touring bike. Jules, Glen and I leave the checkpoint together to slog out the last 50 miles before we can sleep. It's just as well that I had memorized the turns, because there was about an hour of riding after dark before we pulled into Bullard Farm at 9:30 PM. There are different philosophies about how much one should sleep on the 600K brevet. Some people go straight through (some even do the whole ride in less that 24 hours), most nap for a couple of hours, very few sleep for more than four. My philosophy is that any time I have left at the end of the brevet is time I should have spent sleeping at Bullard Farm. Since this is my first 600K, I'm guaranteed to set a personal record as long as I get in under the time limit. There are 140 miles left to go, and the time expires at 7 PM on Sunday. I figure that means we can leave as late as 7 AM on Sunday and still qualify for PBP. Jules is more concerned about unforseen problems, and Tracey Ingle is promising to throw us out no later than 5 AM. Jules and I haggle out a compromise: we'll get up at 3:30 AM and hit the road at 4 AM. That gives us about six hours of sleep (luxurious by randonneur standards), and means we'll only be riding for about an hour before sunrise. I really prefer riding in daylight. Glen is going to leave at 1:30 AM, two hours before us. Jules and I will be the last riders to leave Bullard Farm on Sunday morning. Tracey Ingle wakes us up at 3:30 the next morning, and we come downstairs to find two cyclists, the couple who had dropped out of the peloton after the first mile, have just arrived. They are not in good shape, and will not be able to rest here if they want to finish under the limit. I go outside and put a Nite Rider headlight that I borrowed from Max on my handlebar to supplement the trusty Schmidt dynohub. I switch it on to make sure it's working and then off again to save the battery. A minute later, Jules and I are astride our bikes just about to set off and I switch it on again. Poof! There goes the bulb. Rats. Once again I must rely only on the dynohub. The ride back is pleasant. The sun is out, the skies are clear, but there is a fog in all the hollows in the hills that coats my glasses. I take them off and ride instead in the fog of uncorrected vision. Bruce Ingle passes us in his car with two bicycles on the roof rack: the couple we saw this morning has dropped out. My knees are still sore from yesterday; in fact, they started feeling sore when we reached Bullard Farm for the first time. But I was still able to ride on them, and the climbing is much easier today after sleeping. When we arrive at the first checkpoint in Willington, I'm feeling pretty good, but Jules is worn down from a steady diet of athletic energy food. "I need something other than sugar in my system," he tells me, and heads off to the McDonald's next to the checkpoint in search of a hamburger. I consider this a risk, since long distance bicycling is at least as much a test of your digestion as of your strength, but I figure there's a potential upside as well. Either the fast food will help us a lot or it will kill us; we put our fate in Ray Kroc's hands. It turns out that McDonald's doesn't sell hamburgers so early in the morning, so we settle for one-and-a-half sausage McMuffin's apiece instead. Then we head off into the hills and hollows between Willington and the penultimate checkpoint in Oxford, MA. This time, we're expecting the climbs, and it's not so bad. We overtake two riders, one on a double crank suffering in the hills. We reach Oxford, and are greeted at the checkpoint by Jennifer Wise, the president of Randonneurs USA, the national organization. My knees are a perfect symphony of pain now, and I ask if she has any pain killers. It turns out that Advil is a corporate sponser of the Boston-Montreal-Boston randonneur (this fact alone speaks volumes about the sport of randonneuring) and provides plenty of free samples to RUSA. I take a double dose and get back on the bike to try to finish the remaining 47 miles. I'm relatively strong pulling out of the checkpoint, but things deteriorate steadily as we progress. My left knee is going, and I only hope I have enough left to make it to the finish. Twenty miles later a sharp pain shoots up and I stop and cuss. Jules is concerned and gives me a pill that he says is a homeopathic anti-inflammatory that worked wonders for him. I'm in a mood to try anything, but fear that the only thing that can help my knee now is the one thing I can't give it: rest. I tell Jules I may have to drop, but then I realize the absurdity of dropping out of a 375 mile ride with only 25 miles left to go. So we carry on, making two or three more stops when the pain is to much to transmit any force through. I usually try to make a strong finish, but this brevet ended with a wimper, not a bang. We roll into the finish at a modest pace, and there are Bruce and Tracey again, as well as a group of about three riders who finished recently before us sitting in the shade of a canopy eating potato chips. We're greeted with applause, hand in our brevet cards and sit down on lawn chairs. About fifteen minutes later, the two cyclists we passed in Connecticut come in, the last two riders in the brevet. In total, twenty riders started and sixteen finished. After resting 45 minutes, I get back on the bicycle for the slow ride home. I'm not going to put any stress on my knee, and take it very slowly. When I get home, I've put in just slightly over 400 miles for the weekend. I'm still limping as of this writing, but filling out an application for Paris-Brest-Paris anyway. Chip -- Charles M. "Chip" Coldwell __o "Turn on, log in, tune out" \< (@)/(@) -------------------------------------