Monday, April 21, 2008


2 Dumb 4 Gears

It's true, I can't ride a geared bike like a normal person anymore. I used to think Skip Brown was a crazy man for riding a geared bike like he does, i.e. riding in the big chainring at an extremely low cadence, standing on the hills, and never spinning over 60 RPMs. You'd see him riding up a hill at The Wilderness 101 and think he was a single speeder, because why on earth would someone with the option of switching into a smaller gear be grinding away like that, wrestling their bike up the climb? I guess because it works...if you primarily ride a single speed that is.
Yesterday was The Root 66 Winsted Woods race in Connecticut. I rolled down there with IBC teammates George, Linnea, and Colin. It was another gorgeous day, a little cooler, but I'd take it, last week's 75° felt more like 95° comparative to the temperatures we've been having. The night prior I'd pulled a typical bonehead move by having people over to watch some stupid thing which cannot be named, had a few beers, and stayed up until 1:30 in the AM. As a result my mental alertness was somewhat lacking on sunday morning. This was demonstrated in terrifying fashion when we went to pick up George in Brookline and I began to pull away from the curb before he'd gotten in the car. That woke me up and with Colin's Blackberry aided navigational skills we arrived in Winsted otherwise incident free.
Got out on course for a little bit, decided to up the pressure in the rear tire since I'm running tubes at the moment. The singletrack was rooty, and twisty and there were a few steep, loose climbs, which low pressure would have been ideal for, but there were also high speed, baby-head-strewn descents, and big pointy slabs of rock jutting out of the ground. I like running tubes about as much as I like riding a geared bike. It's PZF: Partial Zero Fun. The pressure you have to run not to pinch flat causes the ride to be brutally abusive to your back. However the tires specced on the Paragon are nice, the Jones ACX's hook up real well in the loose stuff.
So last week I got over-excited and went out way too hard because for once I could. Normally I'd be sitting in the back, waiting for the first hill or singletrack section to bite so I could move up a few spots. My tactic was to go with someone that would ride more my speed throughout the race, that would be Andrew Freye. He wasn't too far ahead of me at Hopbrook, so my logic was that without performing an act of awesomeness similar to last week where I used the one match I had to light the rest of the book on fire (which I then threw in the back of the pick up truck, next to the propane tank, and then...and then...you get the point) in the first ten minutes of the race I should, I say should be able to stay with him. A different Andrew Freye showed up to Winsted, this version took off from the gun, looking pretty scary, and was out of my sight before I knew it. So much for the best laid plans of mice and morons.
Plan B...I guess plan B was to get shot to the back, then ride around in no man's land, breathing too hard in a little gear, bouncing off every root and rock in sight, and cursing quietly too myself. I came up with that one on the spot, I'm quick on my feet y'know. Seamus Powell, a sick Junior Expert was behind me though, not a good sign for me, just a bad sign for him, he came by me, I picked up the pace a little and passed an also atypically geared Paul Simoes. Ahead the group was getting strung out and I was loosing ground.
There were two single-speeders ahead of me, Mike Montalbano and Sean Cavanaugh. They were kicking my ass and I wasn't sure what the psychological implications of getting beat by SSers while on a geared bike would be. I didn't want to find out, but I didn't seem to be gaining ground on them either. I was falling back into my old mindset of "oh, I must be going faster than the single speed guy through this section, he must be going so much slower with that puny gear". Wrong, wrong, wrong! On the SS you accelerate in and out of sections faster, then just carry your speed while recovering on the downs, not to mention the fact that they were probably killing the climbs on their 20Lb. rigid bikes. Stupid bunny.
Eventually I passed a sidelined with a broken chain Freye, I was certain I would see him again. I started getting glimpses of Alec Donahue, who absolutely destroyed the Expert field (
he would have beaten all but a couple of the Pro field as well and I think he flatted) in his first foray into mountain bike racing last week because they wouldn't let the pro roadie, Elite 'Cross race winning bloke race the pro class. I calculated that he was about a minute ahead, not on pace with last week's ride. "He probably raced Battenkill yesterday" I thought to myself. This was true, that and he may have been having mechanical issues, he did end up ultimately DNFing.
After three laps of trying to work out this geared thing, I decided to bag it and ride like an idiot, more like myself. This meant putting it in the big ring and using no gear smaller than my 26t in the rear (third cog down from the top). I was amazed how much better this worked up the first climb, on the lap prior I had bobbled right next to a pre-riding Rich Blair while trying to spin up it in some silly little gear. This method caused me to move a little faster, I saw Foley ahead but I had a resurgent Freye closing from the rear. When Freye came by I dug in and held on for dear life as we came by John. We were railing down the baby-head-strewn descent, I could see Sean and Mike, the two single-speeders ahead. They were likely hating life on this section with their rigid forks, I know I would have been. Just as we passed those guys, Freye's drivetrain completely exploded, his one remaining chainring bolt letting go. That was it for him unfortunately.
The course had a nice rhythm to it, all the climbs were followed by downhills which provided ample recovery time. With this in my mind I absolutely flagellated myself up the two climbs in the middle of the course, trying to ditch a stubborn Sean Cavanaugh, again falling into that silly "I can drop the single-speeder" mindset. If it's a real mountain bike race and the SSer is geared correctly he is going to be incredibly hard to drop. Toward the end of the lap, I could see a Bikeman rider ahead, Arthur Degraw. He was on a full suspension bike, gliding through the roughness while I clanked up behind him. I sat in recovering for a bit when I finally did get on his wheel, then attacked up a small rise just before the second to last major climb, standing in the 44 X 20. These were not the legs I had before an entire winter of relentless fixed gear training.
I drilled it up the last climb up to the field, knowing that this was it, and if I was clear at the top that I was home free on the descent to finish. As I crested the hill there was no one in sight so I just had some fun on the way down, hopping logs and rocks, ripping through the last couple berms, and rolling across the line with a lapped Expert rider beating me in the sprint.
Through attrition, mechanicals, and some luck on my part, I ended up in the third podium spot
and second place in the series on points. I forgot to fit this in elsewhere but I gotta thank George for the bottle hand up, without it I would have been tapped three laps in. I was standing on the line with my two bottles when they announced that we were doing five laps, I figured it was going to be a hot, 2.5 hour race, I was going to shrivel up and die. So I called out to George "hey if you happen to be near the feed zone can you maybe hand me one of the bottles from the car?". The woman giving us pre-race instructions said "Oh no, you have to take everything with you, no outside help". A bit incredulous I said "Is that a new rule? No bottle hand-ups and you are now required to ride with a ferret down your shorts?". Someone quickly corrected her, although this exchange confused George and instead of handing me a bottle, he handed me a live Ferret from the car which had nearly no electrolytes in it, Ferrets are pretty much crap as race fuel.

Sorry, no photos, I had photographer's block, never even thought to bust out the camera.

3 comments:

Georges Rouan said...

nice result!!

jeff said...

ferrets are terrible, but live rabbits work great.

nice result thom! soon you can ditch them gears and get back to it proper.

B said...

Plot twists on a blog oh my!

First you sound like a general pack fart, then you twist us to the land of sandbaggers. Next thing I know you will start bouncing around with the story line like a over caffeinated , hyper Quentin Tarantino wannabe.

Glad you had a good ride, now if we just remove the extra gears...




PS ferret pizza is quite delectable and perfect base food for training.