Vermont is spelled with a capital “V”, surely no coincidence. With the loads of mountains and climbs available, it had to start with a “V”. I mean, if it was mountainous enough to draw a runaway “loose” nun who left the church for a sailor, it must be good, right? (Great nordic skiing there””Trapp Family Lodge, if you are there in the winter months as well).
Anyways, being a seventh generation “V”ermonter myself, who was raised on a family farm on Rogers’ Hill in West Newbury, VT (which was hand cleared and settled in 1763 by my G-G-G-G-G-Grandfather and still owned by my father) I have a deep love and feel for VT, liberal politics notwithstanding. So when I heard about the 200 on 100 “Dumptruck of Awesome” that was available, I just knew that I had to do it. And not only that, I knew that I had to share this beautiful “Ode to the V in Vermont” with all of my best cyber-cycling-soul mates. Okay, soul mates might be going a bit far there, but you get my meaning.
So, enough with the intro.
Break out the rollers, get on the trainers, find your winter gear; lay off the seconds, nurse that one glass of booze, hold the toasting to one drink, dodge Cupid’s chocolates and shoot the Easter Bunny because training for this bastard started yesterday and you’ll be paying for it on the 28th of June, 2012 in spades!
See you in the pre-dawn hours on the Canadian border with our eyes firmly fixed on the prize of the Massachusetts border. Let’s drive this dump truck like Mel Gibson leaving the compound in a post-apocalyptic world, baby!
Route and location details on the Cogal Event Page.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@King Clydesdale
Thanks for all this. The question that follows comes down to what kind of gearing I want. I typically have a 25 at the back, but maybe I want to add a 27. Not necessarily for the steepness, but in order to ease the BFGs during the second leg. The first half looks similar to a typical ride around here, which I can manage fine, but I don't think of it as a warm-up for the same distance with more climbing. This could hurt!
Of course, Killington, Terrible, and Snow kind of say it all, don't they?
@Spearfish
Have a look on the cogals page, @936adl is the organiser of the Shifnal Cogal if I'm not mistaken.
@Chris
Excellent! Great minds really do think alike.
Thanks for the heads up, leaves me a good amount of time to get ready for those hills, assuming that @936adl is happy for a "mostly flat around my area" type to suffer along at the back of the group?
@RedRanger
"chocolate milk"
That will never get old for me either now - thanks for sharing.
@itburns
Methinks you are a mental toss flycoon.
@Spearfish
Mate - I'm hoping to peak just in time for this and am planning to form an inverse breakaway group. It's like a traditional attack only you slow down instead of speeding up. You're welcome to join me.
@heinous
Sounds ideal. Round here the biggest hill we've got is literally tiny so I don't know how i'll go on what I know are some pretty big climbs but i'm going to give it a bloody good go. Training starts tomorrow... 100k taking in all the climbing I can find!
@Steampunk
I completely agree. I usually run a 25 on the rear but I am thinking that I will have a 27 for this ride. Nothing taken alone would really require much more than a 39/25 but over 300 k's with all of that climbing, might be better to spin a few hills on the 27 instead of the 25.
@Gianni
The thing I remember about that book is when he got rid of the carbuncle on his foot in a waterfall. Probably not the key message the writer intended.