Newport to Brewery Ride

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8235331

Original plan for today was to try our hand in the Sunapee Road Race, but registration filled up and we decided to come up with a plan B. We decided to meet close to the race instead in Newport and ride out to the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT and back. Racing would have been interesting and a good challenge/training for early season but I am really glad we did this ride instead.

hurry up Shaun

50 miles round trip, the first 25 flew by. Starting out of Newport we had a small climb of a mile or so and then a sweet descent into Claremont. We cruised up the Connecticut River Valley, the last time I was on these roads was during the last 10-15 miles of the 147 mile Harpoon B2B last year. I didn't really get a chance to enjoy the scenery that time around, I was focusing more on not dying. Road isn't in the best shape but it is classic New Englad scenery. I think the CRV (yeah I just did that) is underated as far as sweet places go. Thats a big river and there are some big hills hidden in there as well.

thats Ascutney back there

We made it to the brewery in just over an hour averaging 20mph for the first 25 miles. We timed it perfectly, rolled into the brewery around 11:30 and got our food/beer before the crowds rolled in. They had done some nice renovations to the brewery since the last time I was there, its pretty pimped out now.

yeah beer!

I got myself a sample tray of beer with 5 5oz samples of Harpoon's finest (except the Raspberry Wheat...dial that Raspberry back Harpoon and it might be good. Until then its a wine cooler in my opinion) and a Bratwurst with Saurkraut. Very high performance eats.

1 down 4 to go

the grease helps to lube your joints

After letting the food/beer settle we hit the road back to Newport. The ride back was not quite as speedy however. The full stomach wasn't much of an issue surprisingly, we had more problems with the diesel headwind coming in from the southeast. I believe there is some weather coming in tonight and this must have been the leading edge of that front because it was 10-15mph sustained for the whole way back. Not fun. We also had to contend with a few hills towards the end of the 50 miles that really wore on us after all those headwinds.

I tried some over the shoulder pics and had a very low success rate. If you can call me looking like a slightly more retarded version of that guy from the movie Powder a success. My other attempts got me a picture of my other hand (no idea how I did that) and a picture of a truck going by in a blur.

born from lightning

I felt pretty good over the course of the ride, I definitely felt my high end power tail off towards the end of the ride but I still had some gas left when we finished. I tried a little mini hill sprint on one of the last climbs and it felt good even with the distance but it didn't last all that long before I shut it down. I think I have gotten some real quality efforts in this early season, I'm looking forward to when I peak this summer to see how much I've improved from last year.