Day 1 of the Tour de Cure.

Start	Finish	Distance
Woburn, MA	Durham, NH	75 miles

All right then, here we are at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. The first day of the TdC (this is my own notation -- patent pending, I'm just warning you) over, and all is well.

I actually forgot to mention anything about the events BEFORE the ride, so maybe I should do that for completeness. On Friday night there was check-in at the same location where the ride started, followed by a too-wonderful pasta dinner to help with the carbo-loading. Unlike other rides I've been on, there were no speeches or readings or anything, just pasta. Maybe diabetes-people are like that, as opposed to AID-people or ALS-people. So not much to report. For a more interesting report of a pre-ride event, take a look at the Mass Red Ribbon Ride from whatever year that was.

OK, back to the ride today. Although it says 75 miles up above, the ride was listed on the cue-sheet as being 82.7 miles today. My odometer said about 83.5. I can't remember, and I'm not going to check. Actually I had intended to rant about this overage more here, but I just realized that they said 75 miles. I somehow thought that they had said 70 miles, and I had planned to rant and rave about how much longer 83 miles is than 70 miles, and what a psychological hardship that was. But now I realize that I had also mis-remembered that mileage, so my rant doesn't make as much sense. Which is kind of too bad, since really the only thing these blogs are good for is for me to indulge my desire to (a) whine and (b) write things that are too long. And now that this rant has been taken off the table, I'm not quite sure what to do.

Maybe I should discuss the ride itself. First of all, a beautiful day for a bike ride. Probably no more than 80 degrees, and as we got close to the coast the temperature was definitely falling perceptibly. It was actually chilly, which in this case is a very good thing. So the weather was great, and the ride took us over to the coast in New Hampshire, which was a great place to ride. Except for the wind. Should I whine about the wind? No, I don't think so. (Damn, what is the matter with me? Where is all the whining?) The TdC crew were really thorough in marking the route, so there was never any time when I felt concerned that I might have lost the route that lasted more than about 2 minutes. And I actually never did lose the route, which is an impressive feat of road marking over 83 miles. (It would have been less impressive over only 75 miles.)

I was, as always, a jackrabbit out at the start. I was in the lead for the first 10 miles, although I don't think I was really pushing it. There was one other guy with me, and he didn't think we were going that quickly either. Then, at about mile 10 I was passed by a few guys that I think got lost from the Tour de France. An easy mistake, the names are similar. So I figured "way to go. You led for 10 miles, and now you can be steadily passed by the entire group for the next 72 miles." It didn't really work out that way, though. I finished in pretty good time (by 2:00, and we didn't leave until 8::30 or so -- you can do the math if you like, but remember there were 3 rest stops) in the front group of riders. Then I got to UNH and they gave me my room, on the 4th floor of this dorm. Those 4 flights of stairs were definitely the hardest part of this day. They were like the Tour de Stairs.

Oh, wait, one sort of funny thing. I haven't seen this before (in marathons I think this happens a lot, but not in biking, as far as I know). Some group of family members or volunteers or whatever gathered at about mile 33 to cheer on the riders, which was nice. But they also were handing out drinks and fruit the same way that they do to runners, by holding in out in front of you as you ride by. I was really confused about what to do. I wanted to be nice, because there they were handing me stuff, but

(a) I already have water on my bike, and it's a lot more convenient than the screw-top plastic bottles they were holding out (what was I going to do with the bottle when I was done?), and
(b) How am I going to reasonably eat an orange slice while riding?

Anyway, I went with the orange slice, and had sticky fingers and an orange peel to deal with until the next official rest stop. I guess dealing with the adoring crowds is a skill to be mastered.

Not much else to report. My roommate here at UNH was a tri-athelete. He got Type-1 diabetes only 3 years ago, which is pretty strange. Apparently it's not known why that happens. But he suggests that I start doing triathalons (which he calls "TRIs", so you know he's an expert) because you don't have to spend as much time away. One day of very serious pain, and the whole thing is over. On the other hand, he was also in a serious accident in which he lost most of his face which has been slowly rebuilt over the last 7 years. (You think I'm kidding about this but I am not. He carries a picture with him. I makes you want to run to the mirror to thank your face for just being there.) Anyway, it's possible that all of that trauma has resulted in him also thinking that triathalons are a good idea. How do you really check something like that?

OK, I think this posting will satisfy those who believe that I can't even write my own name in under 3 paragraphs. So I hope you had fun reading it, and I'll check back in tomorrow with a report on the degree to which my butt is refusing to sit on the seat, and we'll work on an extrapolation to see if I will make it to the end of the ride.

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