A Hard Ride

Tough ride today.
Next weekend is the Quabbin Road race, a race that I've been looking forward to. All this past week we've been planning to do a recon ride today. Well, as the weather forecast got worse and worse throughout the week, the ride kind of fell apart. TJ, Mikey and myself decided the forecast didn't look too bad and we'd go for it. Of course TJ and Mikey were late, but it actually worked out OK. While I was waiting for them I got a call From Steve Douville who said he and Jeff Buske wanted to ride and were leaving his house.
We all met up at the tower at Quabbin reservoir and got ready to go. Unfortunately the rain was still falling. We got underway and as we turned onto route 9, we discovered that the road had been milled for paving. I sure hope this is paved before next weekend because it wasn't fun to ride on.
To make a short story even shorter the rain never really stopped and there are a lot more climbs than I was expecting. This is going to be another tough race. Expo has about 7 guys registered in the cat 4 race (which rumor has it will have a field of 200! Hey why not, there are no rules, it's a Norton Production) so if we can hang in and get together we might be able to produce a decent result.
I decided that since I basically coerced the guys into riding in the miserable conditions that Delta should buy dinner. We stopped at the first pizza place we saw, Charleys Pizza and Sea Food, and chowed down. Everybody left happy. We got in 63 miles and 3 1/2 hours of riding. I figure riding on a day like this builds character, or is it "kills brain cells", I can never remember.
Time to rest up for my first cat 1 mountain bike race in the morning. Till next time, stay dry.

Here's a little taste of the fun.