D2R2 Ride Report
D2R2 went down two weeks ago, and a few of our guys headed up with some mutual friends to take part in the long, gravel-ridden suffer fest that makes this sport what it is. Our very own Chris Harris took the time to recount his experience at the event. We hope you enjoyed reading this piece it as much as we did.
It has been more than a week since the Deerfield Dirt Road Randonnée, and for the past several days I have been trying to decide how to write about my experience. It occurred to me that I ought to try and recount the event sequentially, beginning with the after-work drive to Massachusetts in the back of Andrew’s (of NYC Velo) car, listening to Rich Bravo’s anecdotes from the front lines of the war between the sexes, trying not to fall asleep though wedged among bicycle wheels and sleeping bags. Once at the venue, we pulled on sweaters and wondered how to fall asleep quickest–midnight had past more than an hour before, and race time for the 180K ride would be six-o’clock. Most of the Rapha Continental men were bivouacking in the fifty-degree night, and I thought to myself that I was happy to be sleeping in a decent tent, out of the chill and dew. But the more I’ve thought about how to begin writing, the more it has become clear to me that the morning of the event–clear, cold and bright with sun–would be most appropriate; for it was then, as I groped for a cup of coffee with the rest of the tired, that I listened to a piece of music to prepare my head for the ride.
Beethoven wrote his piano sonata, number 32, opus 111, after his deafness was complete. It has been said that it was because he was not sensible to sound that he composed in a more introspective, metaphysical manner, and that his pieces from that time are among his most loved. I sipped the coffee, ate a few bananas, and squinted at the cloudy forms of riders moving at the margin of the field toward the starting line (my time to queue would be at nine). The second movement of the sonata began, and I increased the volume as the first chords of the “arietta” chimed in my ears. The movement is a theme-and-variations, a compositional form that Beethoven experimented with often, and the thirty-second sonata is distinguished by its ecstatic and optimistic triumph over dark moods within the piece–that, along with a persistent controversy surrounding a variation that, some say, was jazz one hundred years before the birth of that form. In any case, the piece always puts me in a good mood, and since I have a habit of humming whatever tune I hear before a ride during the entire course of that ride, I wanted to listen to something moving.
And why, one might ask, do I write about this sonata? The Randonnée could very aptly be described as a kind of theme-and-variations: the theme is “carriage roads,” dirt or broken-stone highways suitable for horse-drawn cars with large-diameter wheels; the variations are, of course, those roads that more or less fit that definition, and more to the point, the states of mind through which a cyclist passes as he or she moves over them; and believe me, there was a variety of each.
After filling up on sugar and coffee, I returned to the tent where Rich was preparing himself to ride. He had decided on accompanying the team from Independent Fabrications on the 100K route (Rich rides an I.F. painted Rapha colors). I bid him good luck and went looking for Dave Wages of Ellis Cycles. We met at the starting line, he on his gorgeous lugged bike with 28mm tires and a recently-installed low gear range, and I aboard my Ahearne touring bike with 29er mountain bike rubber, trying not to feel like I had brought a gun to a knife fight. The strains of the arietta soothed me as we waited to record our start time, though, just as a pianist well knows the difficulty ahead from months of practice, my legs warned that I had a tough day pedaling to come. The arietta is characterized by a simple three note motif, and I couldn’t help whispering it as I rode with Dave and Henrik, a friend of Dave’s, among fields spilling over with mature corn, the hills arched like hump-backed creatures on either side. For a few miles we climbed on paved roads as we searched for the right pace. Dave talked with an acquaintance, Bill, whom he had met at Le Cirque de Cyclisme in June, as Henrik and I moved around in our small group of riders.
We passed a cluster of older men all riding together, all on constructeur-style bikes, and in the center of their orbits I noticed Peter Weigle who wore an unmistakable jersey of bright primary colors; he seemed to move down the road with complete ease, his hands resting in the deeps of his drop bars. It was then that we approached the first piece of gravel and dirt typical of the event, and I listened to the swinging meter of the first variation in my mind–it is a kind of portent of the compositional range of the piece. Beethoven divided and further divided the bars of his sixteen bar theme, and the effect is one of building anticipation. I have often ridden the dirt roads of the Catoctin range in Maryland with a group of nostalgic cyclists who prefer narrow 700c tires and fixed gears, even on bits of rocky singletrack; I can picture them struggling for leverage, swaying over their bars as they churn up and up even the steepest pitches through palpable fog. There was no fog in Deerfield by the time I started ascending, but the mood was similar. The unprepared or over-optimistic simply stopped pedaling and stood straddling the toptubes of their bikes as Dave, Henrik and I tried to maintain a favorable line. Others, still clipped into their pedals, simply fell over panting when they lost too much impetus. I felt pleased that I had 29er mountain bike tires then as it felt much more like trail riding than road.
Soon we were on a pavement interlude, and Dave and I chatted a little about his frame building–he won an award at this year’s North American Hand Built Bicycle Show in February. He was, as usual I suspect, more interested in the ride than discussion, and we careened down a steep dirt descent. We quickly remembered that we were supposed to be following the baroque cue sheet, a paper neither of us had been checking. We continued into a stream valley and stopped at a four-way intersection to check directions, hoping that we wouldn’t have to climb back out. None of the sonata’s variations is very long, but there are A and B sections in each, and each section is repeated. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t forced to repeat a section of road or two for lack of diligence reading my cue sheet (I had brought one along folded in my jersey pocket) but more of that later. Mr. Weigle came upon us then, asking if he was going the right way. His bike, whose clearcoat I later learned was sprayed a matter of hours before the event, was equipped with the rack, decaleur and bag typical of his builds, but it lacked the vinyl envelope and cue sheet. He claimed the plastic reflects light so that it affects his vision–he may have been lying, waiting as the rest of us were for someone else to provide directions.
Once back underway, we managed to find a rhythm on the steep and loose gravel leading to the first rest stop. I imagined I could hear the gentle swing, the many ironic sharps of the sonata’s second variation as I fought the stones for traction. About this time, Dave and Henrik were showing very good form, pulling away from me perhaps two teeth taller. I tried to remember the maxim I had heard many recite on the starting line: “ride at your own pace, and try and enjoy yourself.” Behind me, Mr. Weigle dropped his chain and started wrestling the bike in the rising dust. When I turned back to the road ahead, Dave and Henrik had passed over a hump, and so, for the first of many intervals that day, I was alone and climbing a very challenging grade on a very poor surface. The sonata came to my aid; the second variation’s strong meter wanted my legs to keep time, and I let them. Up the climb, the sun reaching the apex of its course, I stopped for water (I drank six twenty-four ounce bottles that day) and a couple bananas, but it was only a few moments before I was on Dave’s wheel, bouncing down the long washboard.
Opus one-eleven’s third variation begins with a descending line mingled with two-note chords that swell before the left and right hands have their cheerful, syncopated contest. The front wheel of my bike was pointed down, down Geenfield Road, a wide two-lane stretch that descends one-and-a-half miles. The pavement felt as though it were no longer material beneath me as the knobs of tires picked up revolutions and stopped vibrating. I observed with a smile Dave, who has mentioned to me that he has raced in the past, move his hands adjacent to either side of his stem clamp, sit on his top tube, and virtually disappear down the centerline of the road. I was tucked into my drops but was, compared to Dave, the aerodynamic equivalent of a mainsail. At fifty miles-per-hour or so, my touring bike wished doggedly to hold its course, and it resisted all but the heaviest of countersteer from me. I was happy to finally coast and free myself from the dust, and the third variation matched the exhilaration of the descent perfectly; but I had never come even close to those speeds with such large, loose fitting tires, so I backed off by applying the brakes as I neared the bottom of the ridge and the banks of the minuscule North River. But the feeling that I was making quick headway didn’t diminish, and I tucked into a paceline that coalesced along the road paralleling the quick-flowing stream. I sat at the back of the group and tried to keep up with the guys on road tires and svelte bikes. Of a sudden, Peter Weigle, ever personable, pulled next to me and engaged me in the kind of small talk that is particular to cyclist of a certain type, most of all the pleasures of breaking in a bike that is so beautiful and beautifully made as to approach art on 60 miles of gravel roads. And Mr. Weigle kept a strong tempo at the back of the paceline; we rode side-by-side and talked, considering the time a mutually enjoyed respite, for very soon, the rode would punish us.
Had he who named the road that we were now ascending “Franklin Hill Road” been pedaling, he may have thought the name too ironic: here were the most sever grades I climbed that day, one after the other, and many of them exposed to the midday sun. I could just make out Henrik’s white Ellis Cycles jersey, and Dave’s not far ahead of it; both had been at the vanguard of the paceline before the climb, and they were pulling steadily away from me. There are a number of bars that make up part of the A section of Beethoven’s fourth variation in which the left hand plays alternating fifths deep in the instrument’s lower register, producing an almost tympanic rumble, and tossing on top of this surge is the theme, a vessel barely maintaining course. I would like to claim that I did not, at that moment when the road was much a challenge, begin to falter, but I could feel in my legs discord, the seize, the cramps. I grabbed the wheel of a couple cyclists en route to finish the 180K ride and followed along the burnished dirt road leading to the lunch stop. Once through the covered bridge–and past the intrepid Richard Sachs who, having just finished whatever thing he ate for lunch, stormed out the fences and down the course like a furious cadenza–I found Dave and Henrik who sat on a grassy embankment eating baguettes dressed with mozzarella and tomatoes from the look of them. I was not hungry, not tired, but I knew, being only about thirty-five miles in, that the event still had plenty of knocks left in store for me. I found a packet of electrolyte capsules and swallowed half before refilling my bottles and attaching myself once more to the bicycle, the bass sonority of the fourth variation so deep in my ears as to be barely tonal.
Dave and Henrik, it must be said, are typical cyclists: it is a solitary game, a pursuit of nothing except the top of the next climb, the back of the next rider caught, the top speed one mile-per-hour faster than the last. Cyclists are self-reliant beings, and so I took no offence when Dave, who had just told me not to “blow myself up,” stopped for a natural break, giving me what should have been a minute or two for a head start, but then shot the gap in seconds. In other words, he was ready to get underway at his own pace, and I was welcome to match it if I could. I couldn’t, and I was alone again, riding Green River Road, which presented itself as more of that pavement-like dirt situated a few feet above the meander of what I presume was Green River. I reminded myself that Andrew was now passing his sixth hour on the bike somewhere, and Rich must be somewhere very close; stay resolved, and keep pedaling, I thought. A severe cramp twisted my hamstring useless, and I suddenly couldn’t ride. For a moment I tried to stretch the pain away, worrying that I may have to walk off the course–but where would I go? I wondered. At my back, tumult and muffled voices: the royal blue Zanconato train blasted up the road, leaving me thinking about how much time I was losing, not just being stationary, but alone and reliant on the cue sheet. The cramp subsided, and I put my hands on the top of my bar and rode grimly on, trying to ignore the thought that there was a “hard two-stage climb” to come.
Beethoven’s fourth variation is longest, containing the only sustained modulation into a minor key in the sonata’s second movement. Most musicians take the opportunity to explore the dynamic range of their instruments, and the modulation is inevitably to pianissimo, the exquisite, delicate triads tumbling, sometimes chromatically, from the hollows of the piano as though down and down further. The climb to Apex Orchards was, without a doubt, the ironical low-point of my day, being challenging as it was. My hamstring threatened to twist with every crank rotation, and when it did, I let go a groan and dismounted. I knew the climb was about four miles long, but I had to force myself to spin with the absolute minimal effort, even when the grade slackened. The road was, as I remember it, silent, save the quiet groups of three notes repeating in my mind, and every time I noticed the sound of my tires crunching gravel, a was moving too fast and soon to be in pain. And yet, I was nearing the end of the third quarter of the cue sheet, and the thought that the ride would somehow inevitably end was an ambiguous one. On the very steepest bit of road leading to the orchard rows, when to pedal with my right leg meant instant cramps, and when I decided I should try pedaling with my left alone, a group of riders gradually pushed past me. One of them joked that I was having an easier time of it one-legged than he was with two, and I couldn’t help but smile that I had been so self conscious about losing time.
Ride at your own pace: forced, appropriately, to do that. Try and have fun: yes, indeed. It is fitting that when, at the end of the fourth variation, there is a modulation back to the major, the effect is one of happiness equal to the quiet despair preceding it. The bright triads seem to mildly and hesitantly confirm the upward direction of the piece, its genial spirit. The top of the hill, crowned by apple and peach trees purple with fruit, was stirred by a cool breeze. Under the eaves of a tent, there wood wooden crates half-full of perfect peaches, red and sap-yellow. I took one after another and ate each in a single bite, spitting the stones into my hand. The Zanconatos were doing the same nearby, and we had a chat about the goodness of the event and that day’s weather. I was still feeling very strong, quite ready to ride again what I had just finished, but I knew my legs were in tender shape. I watched the blue train leave and had another peach that seemed, being perfect ripe, to dissolve into a pungent, viscous juice when bitten; much of those peaches ended up on my shoes. I glanced at my bike, which Mike Zanconato had just been admiring, and it occurred to me that, before the Randonnée, I hadn’t ridden it more than a few miles in the past several months–that, I understood, was probably the root of my cramps, my position on the bike being so different from my usual. But there was no help for it now. The finish was just a few small challenges away.
There is a point at which Beethoven abandons, to my amateur’s ear, the traditional theme-and-variation form, for after the fourth variation, the movement is greatly complicated by mixed motifs and the subdivision of bars into more and more notes, culminating in lush trills. The arietta materializes and dissolves while the piece seems to struggle to remain thematically integrated, and I tried to recall the progression in my head, laboring up the ever-rising road. My legs were waiting, as though finger-on-a-hair-trigger, to turn to painful, unbending wire. I told myself to check the cue sheet often, to focus on getting back to the venue while I could still turn wheels. And there, printed on the salmon-orange sheet, half soaked with sweat, were the words, “CAUTION, gnarly descent, stones, washouts next mile.” I decided, perhaps foolishly, to abandon sense and, since I couldn’t climb, tear downhill as fast as gravity would take me. I passed two riders on ‘cross bikes who seemed unable to find a line. The road was steep and rather like unmaintained double-track–the kind of surface I was well equipped and well experienced to ride–and the Ahearne felt surefooted, even as both tires gently lost traction and drifted through each gentle corner.
I felt new life in my legs as I stood and climbed the last piece of gravel. I listened as my mind reproduced the final strange intervals of the piece, spanning almost the piano’s entire range, before the theme, the arietta, emerges for a moment before a modulation keeps the feeling of insecurity still intermixed. The sonata and the ride were all but finished. Finally, I forded at a concrete bridge and shifted into a tall gear, goading myself to reach the parking lot without loosing any more time. Beethoven allows the performer a chance to really demonstrate his technique, demanding an almost sublime trill, played pianissimo, beneath strains of the theme–the piece finishes with a whisper, in other words, and not a bang. The wind ran its fingers over the corn and willow ribbons as I pulled into the finish where Dave and Henrik were drinking sodas, waiting for me. We congratulated each other, smiling and already recounting our favorite or most hated parts of the course. Soon the refrigerated trailer of beer was tapped, the trays of food opened. Rich, it turned out, had fallen on the first section of dirt and fractured his wrist; he nevertheless kept a good attitude about him, despite the pain and indignation. Andrew, having gotten lost with some of the Rapha riders, arrived just as the sun was passing under the hills–he had perhaps ridden close to 200K.
