Tonight's team time trial took us to Yorkshire. Carson, Melissa, Dusty, Shawn and I lined up at 6:20 PM for two laps of the 2019 Worlds Harrogate Circuit, a very demanding course that features constant ups and downs and hardly a bit of flat ground.

I spent a few minutes before the start trying to work on our organizational strategies, after realizing that I had been giving some conflicting advice previously regarding positioning within the group. It's tricky to hold a proper paceline formation in Zwift, and particularly to maintain the selected pull rotation order, so that the next rider is consistently in the #2 slot when the front rider pulls off. Tonight we decided to emphasize proper sequencing a bit more than we have been doing, while still prioritizing holding a line formation as the number one goal. I think we were quite successful in this, particularly early in the ride before fatigue started setting in. We spent a lot of time lined up perfectly in the correct rotation order, setting up some nice pull handoffs.

As usual, we started out at 3.6 W/kg. The group was chattier than usual, and by the end of the first lap Melissa was breaking out in song again, trotting out some Mon Rovia tunes. To me this is always a sign that we're not going hard enough, so I treated the group to my rendition of "Let's Go to Three Point Eight" by the Chainstompers. This was not well-received by the crowd. Carson retaliated a couple of minutes later with a few bars of "Let's Go to Three Point Nine", by the classic Icelandic folk-metal duo High-Powered Heart/High-Hearted Power. This was enough to put a stop to the serenades from Shutesbury.

Nearing the end of the second lap, motivation was starting to flag a bit, so I broke out the big guns in the form of "Let's Go to Four Point Oh" by the Powerheads (from their seminal 1978 album Pukebucket). Carson was very on-board with this, and soon opened up a bit of a gap. Fortunately Dusty and Melissa were able to close it down, and we crossed the line in a tight group, with just 0.7 seconds between our first- and fourth-place riders. We finished in 72nd place out of 105 teams in our division, which is by far our best result since we upgraded earlier in the winter, and a negative split of 20+ seconds on our two laps. Great work everyone!

We are going to do one more week of these TTT events next Thursday night, before our thoughts turn to hopes of spring and melting snow and outdoor rides. Come and join us!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday February 26 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is two laps of the 2019 Worlds Harrogate Circuit course in Yorkshire, for about 17 miles total. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/NTg2eHNrWnJ6M2hkcFN1MmpqZUd1UFhLUnVkeVNCOHRWUVhuMzBCMTlpOD0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

For tonight's race, we fielded our largest team of the season thus far, as Dusty rejoined our crew after missing several weeks with an injury, and Austin joined for the first time. They joined our regular crew of Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and me, as we took on two laps of the Ocean Lava Cliffside Loop course in Watopia. This course features a significant climb and descent each lap, and at 24 miles total, is the longest TTT we've done so far, clocking in at almost an hour.

Having six riders felt like a luxury compared to our usual team of four. We started out with 60-second pulls at 3.6 W/kg, and having five minutes to recover in each rotation is great. In retrospect, we probably could have gone a little harder with such a big group, as there was quite a bit of chatter during the first lap, with Melissa even serenading us at one point.

After the first lap, I bumped the pace up to 3.8 W/kg, and the chatter died down a bit after that. Carson unfortunately had to leave us at around the 40-minute mark, so I assigned him a longer "death pull" right before he had to step out, which he handled admirably, pulling at over 4 W/kg for his final three minutes, taking us almost into the base of the climb of the second lap. Shawn fell back on the climb, and Austin, Dusty, Melissa and I forged ahead to the finish, arriving in a tight group at 58:35, and posting a negative split on the second lap of almost 30 seconds. Our effort was good for 89th place in the Frappe division out of 107 teams, most of which are stacked with strong A and B riders.

Next week we'll race on the hilly World's circuit in Yorkshire -- come out and join us!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday February 19 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is two laps of the Ocean Lava Cliffside Loop course in Watopia, for about 24 miles total. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/Z2NzQXdkOC9mWTFZYm9NR09vd1Eza1l2WXc4L2FOYkRjMG0rby9GamJFbz0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

Jonathan O'Keeffe

Pronouns: he/him

Age: 56

Town: Amherst, MA

NCC Member Since: 2008

Jonathan: The History

Where are you from? 

I grew up on Cape Cod, and I've been living in Amherst since 1996.

How did you first get into cycling?

I've been riding bikes since I was a teenager (I still have the bike I used to ride to high school), but I really started to get more into cycling when I started doing group rides in Amherst and Northampton around 2007.

Why did you join NCC? 

Doing group rides with NCC really changed the way I rode, and made it a much more fun and rewarding experience.  I had been doing mostly solo rides before that, which always felt like a bit of a grind, but riding with other people turned it into a much more social experience (and made me push myself a lot harder, too!)

What type of riding do you do?

Most of my riding is on the road -- a little bit of racing, a lot of group riding, and a bit of solo riding.  I do some local cyclocross racing in the fall, filling in the back half of the fields, and a little bit of mountain biking (I'm always meaning to get out more on the MTB, but it doesn't happen often enough). Once it gets cold in the winter, you can mostly find me on my trainer in Zwift.

You organize the NCC’s intro ride series. Tell us about that!

I started assisting Leila [Everett, former NCC co-president] eight or nine years ago when she used to run the intro rides, and found this to be fun and rewarding.  There's a steady stream of new faces every week, along with a lot of regulars, and it's super-satisfying to watch newer riders develop over the course of the summer into stronger and more confident cyclists.  These new riders are the first stage of the pipeline into becoming more involved in the club and our rides, and I love seeing our intro riders "graduate" into more advanced rides and other leadership positions in the club.

You’ve gone on some incredible cycling trips in the US and around the world! Tell us about some of your most memorable cycling vacations. 

I'm not fast, but I can chug away for a long time, so a couple that stand out the most for me are long-distance endurance races in Michigan and Iceland. In 2013 I traveled with some family and friends to the National 24-Hour Challenge in Middletown, Michigan. This is kind of like a 120-mile road race followed by an 18-hour individual time trial.  We got interrupted for a couple of hours by some huge thunderstorms in the middle of the night, but I finished with 350+ miles for a first-place age-group finish.

In 2018 I teamed up with NCC members Roger Stawasz and Carson Poe, along with some friends, to take on the WOW Cyclothon in Iceland.  We packed four riders, four bikes, and two drivers into a rented camper for a 48-hour, rainy, windswept tour of the 850-mile ring road around Iceland's perimeter. We each rode eight legs of about 1.5 hours each through incredible terrain, passing glaciers, icebergs, hot springs, and tons of waterfalls.  We weren't anywhere close to winning the race, but I'm pretty sure we had more fun than anyone else.

Jonathan’s Favorites

What’s your favorite place to ride?

Do I have to pick just one? I'm going to go with:

1) The Falls Road loop up to the Bookmill in Montague, beautiful countryside, and scene of lots of Wednesday night hijinks over the years

2) The Patten District in Greenfield/Shelburne, gorgeous scenery that always makes me think of the Scottish Highlands

3) Mount Holyoke (Skinner), the iconic Valley climb, with outstanding views from the summit

Favorite ride snack? 

I could ride all day on Fig Newtons. Throw in a couple of plastic-wrapped sandwiches from a gas station and I'm in heaven.

What is your favorite NCC group ride or event? 

Probably a tie between the Tuesday night race series and the Wednesday night A/B ride.

Jonathan Off the Bike
What do you do outside of cycling? 

I work out of my home in Amherst for a small software company in New Jersey, doing web application programming in international supply chain management. In my spare time, I like tinkering with web stuff relating to bikes and maps and data, and I've built a couple of Strava-linked websites for visualizing your activity data on maps and reports.  Since COVID I've gotten really into birdwatching, so when I'm not riding or working, I'm probably in the woods or at a lake looking for weird ducks.

You also maintain the database with every single NCC hill climb and time trial performance going back to 2007. Give us some numbers!

The Tuesday night race series were some of the first rides I did with the club back in 2008.  David Goodwin has been doing an outstanding job of organizing this series since back then through to the present day. I was intimidated by the concept of racing at first, but the crowd was super-supportive and encouraging, even to a slow newbie like me (in my first race I was over nine minutes behind the leader). I caught the bug, and have been doing them regularly ever since. I wanted to give back to the club a little bit by developing an easier way to post race results and standings each week, and this evolved into a web-based application that has been used to track the results for almost 20 years now, with 391 races and almost 6,000 individual rider performances.

What’s next for Jonathan? 

A couple of years ago you did an Everest on Zwift. What can we expect from you this winter? 

Definitely not another Everest! Eight and a half times up the Alpe de Zwift for 29,000' of climbing almost killed me, definitely one of the hardest rides I've ever done. The event I'm most psyched about this winter is leading the NCC team in the Zwift Thursday night Team Time Trial series. Each week a group of us gathers and competes in an organized TTT against hundreds of other teams from around the world.  It's a lot of fun, and one of the best workouts you can imagine. Riding as part of a group effort with other team members makes you push yourself even harder than you would in an individual race effort.  We'll be doing these events on Thursday nights through the winter, posting sign-up info on the website each week in the News section and on the calendar, so keep an eye out -- we'd love to have some new riders join us.

How can club members get involved with NCC on Zwift?

Watch for our events on the calendar on the NCC website. We do a race series every Tuesday night, the Team Time Trial on Thursday nights, and we'll probably be adding additional events as the outside temperatures continue to drop. All of our events are open to all club members. If you have any questions about our events or about Zwift setup, feel free to shoot me an email (contact info below).

What’s on your cycling bucket list? 

Haleakalā. Cross-country ride. Watch a TdF stage. Learn to ride a unicycle. Figure out how to ride my cross bike or MTB over anything bigger than a broomstick.

What are your hopes for NCC? 

The NCC has been putting a ton of effort into youth development, along with reaching out to new riders, women, and transgender/non-binary riders. All of these efforts have been paying off with lots of new participation in many events. I can't wait to see the local cycling community continue to grow as these riders get more involved in the club.

How can people connect with you?

Is there social media besides Strava?  You can find me there at https://www.strava.com/athletes/jokeeffe. Or drop me an email at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

Beth Johnson

Name: Beth Johnson

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 58

Town: Springfield, MA

NCC Member Since: 2025

Beth: The History

Where are you from? 

I grew up in Kittery, Maine, when it was a much smaller and quieter place than it is today. As an adult, I’ve moved around a lot and lived in Alabama, upstate New York, western South Dakota, and the far southwest corner of Oklahoma (“it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here”). We moved back to New England in 1998.

How did you first get into cycling? When did you start joining the NCC’s intro rides, and what was that like for you? 

I’ve been riding since I was little, starting with my old banana-seat bike and graduating to a 10-speed in my tweens. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was over 18, so I rode my Peugeot 10-speed everywhere. There wasn’t much to do when we lived in Oklahoma, so I rode a bunch there and did some road races, rides up to 75 miles, and even a criterium. After a break from cycling, I started up again in earnest last year. Since I’m not much of a road rider anymore, and not very fast, I started going to the Monday Intro D rides, led by Jonathan O’Keeffe. It was a good shakeout ride for me, chill enough to be social, and I could drag my husband along since he hadn’t been riding much.

Why did you join NCC? 

I’ve been really impressed with how friendly the NCC members are and how invested the club is in community outreach. I love the route library, even though it’s focused a little out of my area. And there’s a good variety of ride types.

What type of riding do you do? 

I had always been a roadie but off-road curious. My road bike was stolen just before the pandemic, and I replaced it with a gravel bike. Then I saw the Women’s beginner MTB clinic advertised last spring, given by Lisa Abrams and Amy Stephens. I registered and borrowed a bike, and was hooked. I spent most of the summer riding MTB and gravel, then did the Valley Cat Hustle cross clinics and started racing cross in the River Valley XC series. My sister has raced cyclocross for a number of years and I’ve spectated and wanted to join in. I had a blast!

What is your most meaningful cycling accomplishment?

I had both my hips replaced in 2024, after years of pain and disability that made mounting and dismounting a bike a bit of an ordeal (and riding more dangerous). It took about a year to get my strength built back up, which meant that I was ready in spring of ‘25 to get back to having fun on the bike. I started the season with Raid Rockingham and Bikes Fight Cancer, and the Women’s/Gender Expansive MTB clinic. I learned off-road riding skills that stood me in good stead when I started racing cross. I had no idea there were two cross races practically in my back yard. I ended up going to all the River Valley XC races, and though I finished last or almost last in each, because I simply showed up and finished, I ended up third in the series! And to close out the season, I was able to fulfill a wish and race at The Ice Weasels Cometh.

Beth’s Favorites

What’s your favorite place to ride? 

I love the trails in West Springfield: Bear Hole Reservoir and Robinson State Park. I wish my local towns would invest more in bike trail infrastructure to make it possible to ride safely around and out of Springfield to adjacent towns. I have to drive for most of my rides, which is ridiculous.

Favorite ride snack? 

Fruit snacks and peanut M&Ms

Favorite piece of cycling gear? 

My sparkly purple Cannondale Habit MTB. It’s not just how it looks (it’s gorgeous!) or how I’ve accessorized (leaned hard into the purple), but the freedom and progress that it represents.

What is your favorite NCC group ride or event? 

I’ve only been a member for less than a year, so I have to say my favorite thing was Hydra Cross. I had no idea there was a cross race jammed into that tiny park in Holyoke! It was awesome to race.

What’s your favorite book or TV show?

So many favorite books, but one of my recent favorites is the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. AppleTV picked it up and it’s as enjoyable (but different) in that medium.

Who is your favorite professional cyclist? 

I try not to have a favorite professional cyclist anymore, since I’ve been burned by the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. However, it’s Sepp Kuss. And Kasia Niewiadoma. Because I love climbing.

Beth Off the Bike

What do you do when not on your bike? 

Professionally, I work in IT at one of the local colleges, and before that I was a post-partum doula. 

What do you do for fun? 

I have a young Pembroke Welsh Corgi that I’m taking agility classes with. I’m a ceramic artist and gardener. And I teach an old and obscure Japanese weapon art (don’t bother to ask the name, you have never heard of it).

What is your favorite spot in the River Valley? 

Before my hips made it difficult, I used to trail run the M&M up Mount Holyoke. I loved looking out across the Valley from the summit.

What’s next for Beth? What does “winter training” mean to you? 

Winter training means continuing my weight training (essential for everyone!), riding the indoor trainer (no Zwift, alas), running around an agility course with my dog, and swinging a 7 1/2 foot long pole arm.

What cycling goals do you have for the upcoming year? 

I’ve already registered for Raid Rockingham, D2R2, The Mix Tape, and Ice Weasels, as well as Elevate and Everwild. I just registered interest in officially taking part in the race team, so . . . I’d like to increase my base capacity and get a solid fueling habit down for longer events. I used to be really good at climbing, and I’d like to try to get some of that back. I’m also interested in starting a regular chill MTB ride for women/gender expansive with a focus on skill building by repetition.

What’s on your cycling bucket list? 

I would love to cycle the Shimanami kaido at some point.

What are your hopes for the cycling community in the River Valley? 

I hope we continue to make gains on bike-enabling infrastructure in the Valley, especially to connect the more urban areas and spread the love and awareness. 

What would you recommend to club members who are new to group rides? 

Start with the Monday Intro ride. You’ll learn about group riding at a chill pace with a small time commitment and friendly people.

How can people connect with you? 

On Strava I’m the only Beth Johnson in the NCC club. I’m on the Women and Gender Expansive MTB email list. I hope to try some of the gravel rides this year, and maybe JAM Fundo and a XC race or two? I’m signed up for Elevate and Everwild MTB clinics. If you see me, I might not recognize you, so a reminder is helpful. I’m not much for small talk, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to connect.

Tonight we made a trip to Scotland for our Zwift team time trial, for three (and a half) laps of the Rolling Highlands course.

Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and I lined up at 6:20 PM. The excuses were already flowing before we even started -- Shawn was tired from Tuesday's race, Melissa is still battling a cold, etc. That didn't stop anyone from putting in strong performances though. The course is fun, living up to its name with constant little ups and downs, and precious little flat ground. We started out with Melissa out of the rotation due to her sickness, just hanging on to help with the draft for the rest of us. Carson, Shawn, and I traded 60-second pulls, starting out at 3.6 W/kg for the first lap.

Melissa was cracking jokes and bantering during the first lap, and seemed to be doing OK, so I turned up the heat on the second lap and bumped us up to 3.8 W/kg. That definitely increased the effort level a bit, but she was still going on about some kind of broccoli cookie recipe during the second lap, so we continued to ramp it up. By the third lap Shawn was telling some kind of story about a mule, my oxygen-deprived brain couldn't really follow the details.

The mule story must have taken a lot out of Shawn, as he was starting to drop back halfway through the final lap. Eventually he pulled the plug, and Carson helped pick up the slack with some long pulls as we approached the finish. Despite her sickness, Melissa hung through to the end and unleashed a nice sprint up the final climb, posting a couple of PRs along the way. We hit the finish line with a time of 46:12, good for 97th place in our division. Carson got into the excuse game during the post-ride cooldown, offering up a trio of somewhat-dubious excuses for his third-place finish in Tuesday's race, including a long day at work and something about a disrupted playlist.

Next Thursday we'll be back in Watopia for two laps of the Ocean Lava Cliffside Loop. If you've got some good excuses prepared for your performance, we'd love to hear them -- come and join us!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday February 12 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is three laps of the Rolling Highlands course in Scotland, for about 20 miles total. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/UnN6RjJzVHVOaHZERlYzK25HNVhLb2hvUEJsdURRaGJsc2Yvc1dKVFFMRT0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

Tonight's Zwift team time trial took us to Watopia for one lap of the Downtown Titans loop, which (unsurprisingly) starts downtown, and then climbs the Titan's Grove KOM, before returning to the downtown area for a final ascent of the Hilly KOM. The usual suspects of Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and myself took the starting line at 6:20 PM.

The hilly courses that we have been doing the past few weeks have played havoc with our usual rotation strategy, and tonight was no exception. After just one pull apiece, we were into the rollers of Titan's Grove, and then the main climb. Melissa and Shawn took the lead up the hill, and then I took over to pull through the descent. We resumed our normal rotation during the flatter middle section, and then powered up the short (two minute) Hilly KOM climb. Carson took a big pull through the flat section at the top, and I took over again on the descent. The rest of the course is flat, except for one sharp leading into the Esses, where Melissa dropped back a bit, leaving three of us to power through to the finish line, where Carson unleashed an impressive sprint in the final meters.

We came in with our top three within 0.9 seconds, with a finishing time of 36:52, putting us near the bottom of our division (91 out of 118), where we've been accustomed to landing since we were upgraded a few weeks ago. Next week we'll race the Rolling Highlands route in Scotland -- come and join us!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday February 5 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is one lap of the Downtown Titans course in Watopia, for about 16 miles total. The course is mostly flat, apart from two moderate climbs up the Titan's Grove and Hilly KOMs. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/aXU0Z0REUzRRSWxZTUw3ZndVUDBKSlZlUE5ET1VtOW9TRVdxVXdrR2pGaz0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.