2014 Seven Hills Wheelmen King of the Quabbin Century route. http://www.sevenhillswheelmen.org/quabbin/ based on 2012 century cue sheet: http://www.sevenhillswheelmen.org/cuesheet/2013-03-22_QuabbinCentury2012-W.pdf 2014 King of the Quabbin I knocked off one of my cycling bucket list rides, the Seven Hills Wheelmen [King’s Tour of the Quabbin][ktoq]. I had really wanted to do this ride and I didn’t decide to do it until Thursday or Friday. The weather turned out to be nearly ideal: 70s to 80’s, with high haze and clouds in the second half of the ride from the start of Rt. 202, which could have been sweltering. Mercifully, a lot of the ride has shade, but this would have been miserable in July or August. I think I drank and ate enough that I felt I had enough fuel. There were 3 rest stops at about the right distances to get some PB&J, bananas, and water. I used PowerBar Perform powder for the drinks, and had PowerBars and GU, but only ended up eating 1 Powerbar and 2 Gu’s. The real food is more palatable. Ken Tenure and Bill McCarthy rode with me. The pace was restrained (15.8 mph average), so it meant that I had some legs all through the ride. I had been worried that the combination of lots of climbing and the warm weather would toast me. There was a fair bit of climbing, but I was OK at then end. Had the pace been higher, I probably would have cracked at some point in the last 25 miles, and we know how fun that can be. It was a little disconcerting that the first 7+ miles is downhill. Fun, but portentious. I don’t remember a ride with as many fast, long downhills as this one. All I could think is, “We are going to pay for all this fun at some point soon”. We did, but the descents were fun nonentheless. I have been riding for over a week without a front derailleur shifter paddle, so everything has been in the small ring. Turns out that was fine as I just freewheel for anything about 25 mph, which only happens going downhill. Like the Joint NVP/7HW metric century ride last week (!), it goes through beautiful rolling farm lands in the interior of Massachusetts. But for the asphalt on the roads, some of the farms could have been here during the Colonial Era. It’s really breathtaking at times. The view from the observation tower at the south end of the Quabbin Reservoir is really impressive, looking from South Hadley, to Mt. Greylock, to Monadnock, to Wachusett, it’s an impressive span of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Rt. 202 up the west side of the Quabbin is a bit of a slog, with 2 climbs in 20 miles. It was a great day for a ride, happy to see such a beautiful part of Massachusetts and New England, and glad to have good companions on the ride.