Hub Rollout

[ornoth_cycling]

It’s almost October, and I haven’t posted a ride report in three months: since June’s MS Ride. That’s because for the most part I haven’t been riding at all, instead spending my weekends selling off my furniture and packing up for an impending move to Pittsburgh. In the three peak months of July, August, and September, I rode a total of 450 miles; compare that to the same period last year, when I rode 1,600 miles.

However, last weekend I made a brief exception, to participate one final time in Boston’s signature 50-mile ride: Hub on Wheels.

The weather was overcast but clearing, which suited me well, since I was concerned about UV exposure, only because the antibiotics I was taking after having a tooth extracted had vociferous warnings about sunburn.

As I waited at the start line, local bike advocate Steve Miller blathered inanely at the crowd for a full half hour before finally letting the riders depart.

I had made every effort to line up right at the front of the field, in order to extricate myself from the masses of slow and dangerously oblivious casual riders, but my plan was thwarted by a couple hundred riders who were allowed to line up an a VIP area at the head of the ride. It would have been safer and much more orderly if they sent riders out in descending order of speed, the way the Pan-Mass Challenge does.

Fortunately, the ride begins with a long 8-mile out-and-back down Storrow Drive, and the width of the highway and a brutal west wind allowed those of us who had eaten our Wheaties to separate from the chaff. It was the usual mixed bag of riders, I noted as one rider incongruously wearing sneakers and platform pedals with triathlon aero bars tried to keep pace with me.

By the time I reached (and skipped) the first rest stop in the Arnold Arboretum, I’d managed to separate myself from the pack with a half dozen other guys whom I’d see off and on for the rest of the ride. Less happily, I’d find myself back in the pack again and again, when the 50-mile route twice diverged from the shorter routes in order to accumulate miles, and then rejoined the slower riders further on.

As usual, I pushed myself harder than I really expected to, in order to deal with the crowds. My form wasn’t great, having taken much of the summer off, and I had to fight cramps as the miles added up. For the first time, I had unexpected pains in my right heel and arch.

One part of the ride that’s supposed to be scenic but always fills me with terror is the section through Stony Brook Reservation. It’s a paved walkway through the woods, but it was made before bike path design standards were developed. It’s incredibly narrow, so riders must proceed single-file. It’s mostly a very fast downhill with swooping turns, which, combined with an incredibly slick, moss-covered surface, makes that entire section a perpetual white-knuckler.

Having started at 8am and skipped all the rest stops, I finished before 11, crossing the line in the company of a guy named Jeremy whom I’d seen all day after lining up with him at the start. I was home just after 11am, with a shower, lunch, and then most of the day still ahead of me.

For most of this year, on every ride I’ve reminded myself that these are the last times I will participate in these events and traverse these roads. That is especially true for Hub on Wheels, which is the only organized ride that focuses on my home town, and which I’ve done a half dozen times now.

There are, of course, thousands of things I will miss about living in Boston. But the roads around greater Boston are also where I became a cyclist, and they’ve been my home and my cycling world for these fifteen years of riding. They’ve led me to thousands of wonderful and peaceful places that few people other than cyclists get to enjoy. I will miss each of them, and treasure their memories for the rest of my life.