Another PMC – my sixth, Matt’s third – in the books, and as always, we had a wonderful time. I’ll be adding more pictures over the course of this week as those that were better than I at taking them (hi Rachel!) get them posted. I’m still feeling a bit tired and out of it but wanted to write up a bit about how the weekend went.
We all met up at the Prudential Center on Friday afternoon to board the Team Ropes bus to Sturbridge. Traffic was lighter than usual and we made great time, and we had about an hour to register, get our sweet temporary tattoos, shop, and get the bikes put away before heading to the hotel in Southbridge.
Check out our sweet tattoos.
We parted ways with Rich and Wendy for the evening (who had lucked out and gotten a room at the very nearby Hampton Inn), got checked in, and headed out with Team Ropes for a surprisingly (no offense to Southbridge, but expectations were low after last year’s pizza place) tasty Thai food dinner.
Registered and ready to ride!
Usually I have a miserable time sleeping the night before the ride, but I had remembered to grab the bottle of melatonin that served us so well when we went to Turkey in June. Matt and I dosed ourselves and were asleep before 10pm. Of course, we had to be up by 3:45, but a bit over five and a half hours of sleep is about three more than I usually get before the ride. I put on my ribboned helmet and hustled out the door.
Why we ride
It was not actually pitch black in here.
So at the ride start, there are three lanes that you can line your bike up in – fast, steady, and casual. I’ve started in all three now! Usually I try to get to the front of steady, since that’s the most accurate, but this year, Rachel, Darren, Matt and I decided to go with the back end of fast. Totally the right call – the fast lane really fills up because everyone is itching to get out on the road, so even if you are in front of the steady line, you often automatically find yourself well in the second half of the big group. Unfortunately, Wendy discovered a flat as she was getting her bike lined up, so she and Rich got that fixed and started at the very back. We were able to use Facebook and email to keep tabs on each other all day though, which was great!
Rachel and Jen, ready to go!
No one should be this cheerful this early.
The day started out pretty cloudy and cool, but muggy. Matt and Darren pretty quickly outpaced Rachel and I, but we all had a great ride. Rachel and I hauled up through lunch. Despite the relative hilliness of the ride’s first half, the miles really fly by until about mile 60, which is usually where I start to feel really hungry (lunch is at mile 70, and the stretch between the second waterstop and lunch is 28 miles, which is the longest stretch without a break on the PMC). In fact, Rachel and I made some new friends when we called our own waterstop at a hair salon about 8 miles before lunch! We saw most of our familiar faces out there on the road, too, though the puffy ladies (ladies wearing inflatable costumes) were notably absent from the second waterstop. Fortunately, the bagpiper was in his usual place at the top of the surprisingly steep hill just before the lunch stop, playing music fit to accompany hill that reduces many riders to walkers. Poor Rachel almost got taken out by one wobbly and exhausted rider, but she avoided disaster and we pushed through to Dighton-Rehoboth High.
Meanwhile, Matt was really hauling, and got into lunch about 45 minutes before Rachel and I (he is a much faster rider, and he also doesn’t stop for as many fluffernutters at the waterstops as we do – his loss). He waited to see us and to chat with my awesome mom, her boyfriend Doug, and my Grandpa, who all came to see us. They brought us much-needed Gatorade (the good stuff), wipes, and sunscreen, which I needed since the sun had come out and it was getting really hot. Matt headed back out and Rachel and I hung out a little more and caught Rich and Wendy!
Wendy, Jen, and Rich at lunch!
Rachel, Jen, and Wendy, also at lunch!
After lunch, it was all of a suddenly brutally hot. Rachel and I struggled along for seven miles or so before reaching the sweet oasis of Jeff’s driveway, where Matt’s cousins Jen and Christine (Jeff is Christine’s boyfriend) and their friends offered us words of encouragement (gladly accepted) and shots (sadly declined). We caught our breath while they reminded us that there was one more bad hill to go, and we headed back out into the heat. Happily, at this point many of the roadside supporters were bringing out their hoses to spray us down as we went by (if you live on the PMC route, a sprinkler pointed at the road will earn you 5,300 friends for life).
After the last bad hill, it really is all downhill, and we got our speed back up. In fact, we went a little too fast, and beat mom and Doug to the Mass Maritime Academy finish. Happily, Matt had somehow teleported himself to the end with time to shower and get back out to the finish gate, so he was there to cheer us in! Having pushed it on the last leg, I was feeling a little too wiped out to go enjoy the beer tent at the MMA (but I can show you some people who enjoyed it for me!). Mom and Doug had arrived, so we elected to hang out at the finish line with them to watch Rich and Wendy come in.
Team Ropes, enjoying a well-earned adult beverage.
Saturday was full of inspiring and emotional moments. We had a great ride down Cherry Street, a street in Sheldonville that goes all out with banners, signs, balloons, water, and cheering. We passed dozens of tear-inducing and inspiring signs, including one (and I can’t recall exactly where) placed in a quiet and empty yard, thanking us for riding in memory of the family’s uncle, who had passed away just weeks before. I was hoping to have the energy to bike over the bridge this year but was just exhausted, so Matt, Rachel, and I loaded our bikes onto Doug’s car and gratefully accepted the lift to the hotel. After emergency chicken fingers were administered, I took a dip in the pool, and we all retired to the hotel restaurant deck for yet more food and a single well-earned beer. No trouble sleeping on Saturday night.
We had gone to bed worried about Sunday’s weather. The roads were wet when we woke up, and it was extra-dark as we headed out at 5:15 a.m. But for the most part, the rain held off. We had a few showers, and we were soaked just from the water coming off the road, but at least we didn’t have to deal with the torrential downpours that came through in the afternoon. Rachel and I made great time, while Matt managed to stay with the Team Ropes elite paceline for pretty much the whole day! (For reference, we were extremely pleased with our average speed of 16 mph, which was faster than last year and pretty impressive given the weather and the brutal headwind. Matt’s average speed was almost 20 mph.)
First water stop. Note the clouds.
Chilling at Wellfleet - the last waterstop before P-town
No, literally chilling. On this ice couch.
Doing Gatorade shots
The weather did cause a few problems though. First, there were fewer people out in support during the first leg of the ride (not that I can blame anyone for not wanting to stand in the rain at 5:30 in the morning!). Second, there were a ton of crashes. In the last mile before the “lunch” stop there were three ambulance-requiring crashes in the road. Road paint gets unbelievably slippery when it’s wet out, and it was pretty clear that in each crash, a rider had hit the paint and gone down, sometimes taking a few other folks with him or her. In fact, we lost a Team Ropes’ alumni to this kind of crash (he has stitches and a concussion but was released from the hospital). The Team Ropes paceline that Matt was in also had a bad accident when a car pulled out in front of them and the first three riders in the line hit the car hard (the driver stayed on the scene). One rider had to go to the hospital with some broken bones and a concussion, but the other two were able to get back on their bikes (a miracle, considering one of them ended up UNDER this woman’s car!). Third, it was WINDY. For most of the ride, this wasn’t a problem, but as we turned onto the National Seashore at the Provincetown headlands, it became an issue. Rachel and I could feel the headwind slowing us down even as we went downhill. We saw another crash that we think was caused by one rider being blown into two others. That last five miles took us twice as long as any other five miles on the ride, and was a pretty unpleasant way to end the ride, but it did make getting off the bike all the more satisfying. You can kind of see how windy and cloudy and weird it was in this picture I stole from Rich:
Welcome to windy Provincetown!
Rachel and I rolled into the finish at 11:15 a.m. and hustled to shower so we could get to the burgers and beer! My favorite moment was as I was combing my hair outside the showers, I heard a yell of joy, and turned around to see Wendy run up to our friend Jared (who actually does a Day 0 ride to Sturbridge from the Berkshires!) and give him a big hug.
Yay us!
As the wind continued to pick up and the skies continued to darken, Matt and I realized we should call his parents to come get us sooner rather than later. Though I was sad not to get to spend more time at the Inn after such a great ride, I was happy to get in the car as the skies opened up.
Leaving the Inn early also led to a fantastic coincidence! I saw into Sara G’s uncle, Manny, as we were driving down the street and hopped out of the car to say hi! He mentioned his friend Amy had done the PMC as a first time rider, and as he described her, I realized it was the same Amy that Rachel and I had ridden with for part of the day. In fact, she was with us as we rode through the three crashes before lunch and she had nervously asked if there were always this many crashes. I stuck around to say hi – gotta love PMC coincidences!
I don't know why my face is so red!
After all that excitement, it was back to the car. Matt’s parents were kind enough to pick us up and bring us to Harwich, where we were spending the night, even though it meant sitting in awful Cape traffic. Luckily for Matt, he can sleep anywhere:
He earned it
So in a pretty large nutshell, that’s the PMC weekend! I can’t believe it’s over already, and I can’t wait until next year. As always, I am so grateful to the other riders for their support on every hill, to the volunteers for making sure we have everything we need to have a successful and fun ride, to the people who stand on the side of the road and cheer and offer water and oranges, and to everyone who donated and offered words of support before the ride and throughout the day (especially to those who made Friday and weekend donations – those are so wonderful and motivating to get).
Thanks to my Mom, Doug, and Grandpa for the lunch stop pick-me up and to Mom and Doug for the MMA road support and ride to the hotel (and especially for being so patient while we figured out what we were doing)! Thanks to Team Ropes and Rachel for letting us tag along and for handling the logistics and photos. Thanks to Jen and Christine and Jeff for the driveway party. Thanks to my Dad for reminding me through his own efforts on the bike that two days is totally doable, even when it seems impossible. Thanks to Matt’s parents, Bev and David, for the surprise Wellfleet cheering section, the ride from Provincetown, the use of the car, and dinner! Thanks to Matt’s brother Ben for getting the car down to the Cape in the first place, and for helping Matt return the car yesterday when I was too wiped to do it. Thanks to Rich, Wendy, and Matt for being awesome teammates and motivating me through every mile. Thanks to Rachel for being a great riding buddy. And finally, thanks to Sara G and her family for all of their amazing support and good thoughts.
I linked to them above, too, but for data geeks, the data from day 1 is here (http://connect.garmin.com/activity/105052520) and from day 2, it’s here (http://connect.garmin.com/activity/105052362).
