First, an editorial note: A few of you have asked if there will be a post about the wedding. Yes, there will, but I’m waiting to put it up until we have the official photos, because I’d like to include some nice photos in the post. So we’ll come back to that later.

Now: The Exeter Crit was an unmitigated disaster for me, probably the worst race I’ve ridden in a year, if not more. So bad, in fact, that I think I pulled out without doing more than maybe three laps. Just totally awful. Embarrassing. So what happened?

In Trouble in Exeter, Photo by Matthew McNeely. Used with permission.

I think there were three factors in play. First, because we’ve been so busy with the wedding this spring, I haven’t raced any crits yet this year. Road races and crits are really two different beasts, and just because I’ve had some success on the road doesn’t translate to success in a crit. My climbing is good and my endurance is good, but I haven’t developed the raw acceleration I need to race successfully in crits yet this year. So that obviously will be a focus of my training for the next few months. Second, a combination of being busy with the wedding and bad weather and lots of hiking meant that I took about two weeks off (or nearly so) just before this race. I’m actually probably stronger than I was before the break, since I did so much backpacking, but time off the bike is certainly no help when preparing for a hard crit. Finally, I just got really bad position on the line. I lined up in the middle, but got completely boxed in from the start by a bunch of guys who rolled out way too slow, which meant that I quickly found my way to the back of the pack. Not a good place to be if you’re me (that is, a not exceptionally fast rider) in a race like this. Guys immediately started sitting up, meaning I had to close gaps that I should not have had to close. It was a mess, and a mistake I can’t afford to repeat.

So I’ve got my work cut out for me if I want to do anything other than race in road races this season. Look for updates on my success (or lack thereof) in the next few weeks.

In celebration of the fact that I’m getting married next weekend, some of my friends and I headed up to the Whites for the weekend. We spent Friday night at the excellent Wildwood Campground near Kinsman Notch. (It’s excellent because it’s quiet, well-maintained, and pretty.) Aaron, Jeff, and I (and Denali, Aaron’s dog) left for camp early and had time to take a dip in a nice swimming hole along Route 112, then kicked back at camp, opened some beers, lit a fire, and ate dinner. Ed and Paul joined us a little after dark. Eventually we made our way to bed, hoping not too much rain would fall overnight.

We woke up a little before 7:00 to gray skies, but no rain. We toasted some bagels, scrambled some eggs, and started packing up camp before the skies opened about an hour later. We packed up in the rain, which really wasn’t too bad, and hopped in the cars to head to the Zealand trailhead. Of course, at the forefront of our minds was the disastrously bad weather we hiked in this weekend a year ago (39 degrees at elevation with about 5 inches of rain; climbing steep trails was literally like trying to hike up a waterfall), but, as we set off, the rain was holding off and it wasn’t too terribly wet.

We reached the Zealand Falls Hut after a short easy hike, and dropped packs to have lunch. We had passed most of the croo — packing out the trash — on the trail in, and most of the guests were out on the trails, leaving only a lonely volunteer and one croo member to hold down the fort. The croo member was working on dinner, and some delicious scent wafted out the door, and the volunteer — whose name I never caught — came out and chatted while we ate lunch.

One of the best things about the huts is that they often sell or share extra food from lunch or dinner that the guests didn’t eat with anybody who stops in. So we paid $1 for a whole bunch of sticky buns, and Ed ate a big bowl of delicious looking black bean soup. We talked a little about how the hut gets power (from a hydro-powered car alternator) and water (from a fully-mechanical, hydro-powered 200-foot well) with the croo, then hoisted the packs again and headed for the summits.

After a not-especially-steep, but rugged climb up the Twinway, we stopped to check the view at Zeacliff (mostly clouds) before heading up to the Zealand summit. Aaron and I thought we had hit Mount Zealand a couple of winters ago, but it turns out that in the deep snow we missed the spur trail that goes to the true summit, an unimpressive bump without views. Fortunately the land nearby is interesting, with some ponds, open boggy areas, and occasional views of the Twins and Mt. Guyot ahead. After a long and uneventful walk in the woods, we broke free on the summit of Guyot. Mount Guyot doesn’t count on the 4000′ers list because it doesn’t have 200′ of prominence over the key col, but it’s a nice summit nonetheless, broad and open and covered in Alpine tundra and low scrub. The views are excellent, but my last memory of Guyot was a brief, screamed conversation over howling winds and horizontal winds with a hiker going the other way about how much further it was to cover, so being able to take in the view a bit was a real treat. We did, then headed down to the Guyot Shelter and Campsite for the evening.

The Guyot Shelter is pretty much the most remote place in New Hampshire, if not most of the East (except, maybe Maine) at about 10 miles in all directions to the nearest roads. It sits just below the Guyot Summit at about 4000′, and is reputed to be one of the most popular campsites in the backcountry of the Whites. We set up camp — a tent and tarp — on one of the big platforms below the shelter, dropped packs, and uncorked the two liter bottles of tonic water that Paul carried up to camp and fixed ourselves some aperitifs. This kind of beverage is pretty unusual in the backcountry, and we all figured Paul was pretty much a hero for lugging the extra five pounds of weight the whole way to the campsite. We kicked off our boots, had some dinner, and played poker while the light slowly disappeared. Paul tried to bake some peanut butter bread, but the pot wasn’t the right size, and the bread proved inedible, which diminished our esteem for him only modestly. With dinner and dishes done, we unfolded our sleeping bags and drifted off for the night.

As soon as we bedded down, the rain came in. It was relatively light, but enough that I was glad I had decided to sleep in my tent (the rest of the guys slept out under the tarp on the platform). We worried a bit that Sunday was setting up to be similarly awful to the last trip we made over the Bonds, but the rain began to taper as we cooked breakfast and packed up camp. By the time we rolled out around 8:30, the rain had stopped and the temperature was warming up. We reached the spur for West Bond almost immediately, dropped the packs and bagged it, then headed back for the main event, Mount Bond and Bondcliff.

We were not disappointed this year. The clouds broke, the sun came out, and we trekked across one of the most spectacular ridges in the White Mountains. With the summit of Mt. Washington clouded in, not a single manmade structure was visible in any direction. Just wilderness, peaks, and the wind. I dawdled, took in the view, and took pictures. I had waited a year for this amazing view, and wanted to savor it a little. Finally, I met up with the rest of the guys at the top of Bondcliff, we share some snacks and headed down into the valley.

We made it to the Wilderness Trail, the main trail along the valley floor on the East Side of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, in time for lunch. We dropped the packs one last time, ate cheese and peanut butter and pita, then loaded up for the long walk along the old logging-era railroad bed. And I’ll say this, it was one of the most painful five miles of my life. My feet hurt, my shoulders hurt, my legs hurt. Everything hurt. But we pushed on, finally crossing the big suspension bridge to the Lincoln Woods parking lot a little after 2:00. Jeff and I soaked in the river while the other guys went to get the cars.

All told we did about 18 miles over some of the most spectacular country I’ve seen in the East. The Guyot campsite is a great place — assuming you get there early enough to get a tent platform — and the Bonds really are unparalleled as far as the view goes. It was a great sendoff into the married world. Thanks to Aaron, Jeff, Paul, Ed, & Denali for a great trip.

Detailed route map and elevation chart are here. Lots more photos on Flickr.

Saturday dawned grey and threatening, and things didn’t get better as we drove up to Auburn for the race. It rained and thundered and generally became unpleasant for bike racing. Fortunately, by the time we got to the race, things had cleared slightly and the roads were drying off. So we raced in hot, soupy conditions instead of pouring rain like a lot of other fields had to do.

The Lake Auburn course keeps changing. Two years ago is was a brutally hilly, technical road course with a screamingly fast downhill finish. Last year it was flat, fast, and easy. This year’s course was deceptively hard: 11.5 miles, mostly flat, with one very fast descent that went right into a short steep climb, and, later in the lap, a series of tiered climbs leading into a long, straight, slightly up hill finish. On another day, a cooler day, perhaps, it wouldn’t have been that hard, but on a hot and humid day, early in the season, I found it hard to stay cool and hydrated. But we race without regard to weather, so I suffered some and stuck it out.

We started, rolling pretty moderately through the first lap. I suffered a bit on the first climb, but my legs opened up in time for the second set of climbs and I was able to move into good position in the middle of the group, where I stayed for most of the second lap. It didn’t hurt that somewhere very early in the race one guy went free from the front (turns out it was PVC’s Fred Thomas). He had help in the field, and, once he was well clear, nobody seemed especially interested in racing for second place, so the pace stayed pretty moderate and attacks few and far between for quite a while. By the end of the second lap I was definitely starting to feel the effects of the heat and humidity. Not that I was suffering terribly, it’s just that everything — clothes, shoes, shift levers, etc. — was wet and my stomach felt uneasy.

But everybody else was feeling it too, and my legs were pretty good, so I was starting to think there was a shot at a pretty good finish. I didn’t want to make a move until near the end of the race, so I bided my time in the back of the group, saving my legs as much as possible.

But near the end of the third lap there was a massive pileup. I heard people going down before I could see what was going on, and was able to ride off into the gravel shoulder to avoid going down. But I did get gapped by the peloton pretty badly, and had to chase at full power for about three minutes to get back into the group. (And it was a really, really good chase; I felt really strong!) Unfortunately, I blew pretty much the full tank of reserves I had been saving for an attack, and spent the rest of the race feeling terrible, just glad to be able to hang on. I knew that if I launched an attack before the final sprint, I’d blow on the last hills and end up finishing far behind the group.

In the end, I probably could have made a move with about 1-km to go, but there wasn’t a lot of room, and I was feeling a little conservative. I’m still not quite healed from the last crash — and I definitely don’t need any road rash at the wedding — so I held back and played it safe. Final result was 17th place, which turns out to be one of my best finishes since moving to the Cat 3’s. I’m definitely feeling stronger this year than I ever have before, so, with luck I’ll pull down a few good finishes in the next couple of months.

First, however, I get a couple of weeks off from racing: one to do a few days of backpacking in the Whites, and one to get married. I’ll post updates about both of those eventually, but I think the next couple of weeks will be pretty busy, so you’ll have to excuse me if I neglect the blog for a week or two.