Updated 7/15/22
Welcome to
Chris Spear's Verification World! I hope you can find some resources for
verifying your next hardware design. I am a
Verification Engineer with Siemens,
specializing in SystemVerilog and the UVM methodology. To reach me, send
me email.
Listen my children and you will hear
Of the midnight ride of Christian Spear.
The Boston Marathon features tens of thousands running from Hopkington
to Boston. What you may not realize is that at midnight the same day,
thousands of cyclists ride the same route. I met Jeff (on the right)
at his house near the starting line at 11:40pm and we joined this
chilly group. This is one of the most bizarre rides I have ever seen.
Some of the hundreds of riders wore costumes, or even just went a
little overboard with lights and a dozen glow sticks stuck in their
helmets. As a result, we were relatively safe as there were so many
people all lit up. (Plus it was a Sunday night so a lot less drunks on
road!) The temps stayed around 40 the whole night under a dry and
moonless sky.
The first few miles are downhill so I was glad I overdressed. Jeff and I passed a lot of riders, manly because we didn’t want to be in a crowd in the dark. Before we knew it, we were in Framingham, then Wellesley. A group of girls cheered us and filled bottles. At 1am!
By the time we made it inside Rt. 128 we were towards the front, but there were always riders ahead of us, visible by their little red blinky lights. In Boston we saw people leaving the bars at 1:30am – Monday is holiday for many people. Soon we were at the finish line taking selfies. Then a quick pancake breakfast and we turned around for the ride back.
Since this was not a mass start event, there were riders scattered across the whole route, still headed into Boston, some running quite late. There were also runners headed in both directions, pounding away on an ultra-run. Cars occasionally passed us all the way back to the starting line, which was a little scary when Jeff’s battery stopped 2 miles from the end. Luckily I had zip-tied 3 headlamps on my helmet and had 5 more lights and 4 reflectors. We did a nice Long Slow Distance ride, 57 miles at a talking pace, all before 4am. By 4:45am I was home, showered, in bed, and a little dazed. Even made it into work, none too late.
Want your best year on a bike? Check out my blog for tons of tips and stories.
Listen to my first podcast, the Zen Trivia Challenge that I created for my favorite podcast, Coverville, from Brian Ibbott.
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