Big Bikes

Root 66 Hodges Village Dam - Massachusetts State Championship

Get Some

Yup, that’s a pretty awful title, but I’ve been watching HBO’s series “Generation Kill” and instead of sleeping this morning I was up watching an episode. I’m the guy who watches The Discovery Channel’s Navy Seals “Hell Week” or UFC fighting to get stoked for bike racing. I know I’m an idiot, it’s quite alright.
Can’t really whine and cry about my prep this week, it was as good as last week’s was terrible. I took it easy this week on the bike, except for one day of hills in preparation for SSWC08. I was a total recluse, getting home Friday and Saturday night and hitting the couch. My friend Uri tried to rope me in to a movie night at the shop, but I quoted now Cycle-Smart coach Kurt Perham “Is it at my house? I need to be home on the couch, in my boxer shorts by nine”. I tried to sleep a lot, but I suck at sleeping, so that didn’t happen (see watching Generation Kill at 7AM on race morning). I didn’t even have a sip of beer all week, weird.
Did some cyber-snooping Saturday night to confirm that John Foley, the bad mother-licker threatening my lead in The Root 66 series was definitely up at The Great Glen 24 Hour Race. I rested easy after that, knowing that I just had to show up with pockets full of tubes and CO2’s, finish the race, get a few points, and I’d be in a whole lot better position. Unfortunately (for me, not them) my team/carpool mates Colin & Linnea were up at The GG24 as well, so I’d be rolling solo to this one. What this did allow me to do was to go to my crazy place during the ride down. This mostly involved singing along to Iron Maiden and The Misfits with feeling, until my throat was sore, while pounding out the beat on the steering wheel and intermittently playing air guitar.

Normal

I was there plenty early, got on the bike and went for a pre-ride spin of the course. I did this one a couple years back and it was as fast boney, and bermy as I remembered, glad I had geared up to a 33 X 16 for it. It would hurt in a couple spots, maybe cause me to run in one spot, but allow me to hammer through most of it. During the pre-ride we came across a poor beginner girl who had fallen on her face, smashing her braces into her lip. She was lying there, inconsolable, wailing, and holding her mouth. I hope things worked out for her. I hope they got her face unstuck from her braces at the very least.
Humor was good on the line, the field was small but there were a bunch of fast guys there, including a Fuji rider to my right by the name of Mark McCormack. When the signal was given we went , I hopped right on the wheel of McCormack, thinking that was my best bet, it was. I spun on the tip of my saddle, following him up the gravel grade to the final steep pitch into the hole shot. Here one rider decided to take an alternate line and come around wide to slam directly into my rear wheel. It was a bonehead move but my response was disproportionate “C’mon dude! Learn how to ride a bike!”. The version of me that showed up to this thing was all psychotic and aggro…and apparently quite rude.
Mark lead the way through about the whole first lap, gaps weren’t really opening but no one was trying to come around, and I was content to follow, the novelty of sitting on such a prestigious rear wheel would take a while to wear off. I don’t know, maybe it was the second lap, maybe still later in the first, Nathan Ringquist came to the front, I stayed on Mark, gaps began to form. Second lap the gaps were larger for sure. I thought Sean from Bethel Cycle had come up, I thought this for about a lap, then I realized it was a rapidly rising through the ranks from Sport to Semi-Pro in one damn season Scott Feltmate from Bethel. I think it was on this lap that Mark was riding in front of me when his tire began to gush air, that would be it for him.

Crazy Place

By the third lap, there was nobody behind us, the pace brutally uncomfortable. I’d push through the rough spots and fight back on when I got gapped. Forgot to mention my other act of public relations awesomeness from the first lap. It wasn’t an issue the first time I did this race but on this particular day the Motorbike riders had decided to stage a sort of Critical Mass type event, blocking the trails with their stalled out, stinking, two stroke engine machines. These are evidently “Their trails”. Oh, when will we run out of fossil fuels entirely? What a sad day that’ll be. Those dudes will look pretty frickin’ silly all padded up in their reject from the cast of The Road warrior outfits riding around on Segway Scooters. Then there were the walkers who didn’t have the good sense to get off the trail when ten dudes were bearing down on them at twenty miles per hour, spitting out rocks as they went. “You should probably get off the trail” I sniped as I went by. Boyfriend of walker yells “What the fuck did you just say?!!”. I fully expected to catch a large stick in the face on the next lap. I didn’t say anything to the Rottweiler that decided to play chicken me with on the last lap, I just swerved, hoping he wouldn’t latch his frothing maw onto my calf and drag down like he would a toddler with baloney juice on it’s hands.
My brain basically shut off at some point, I just concentrated on riding hard and efficient. The course was brilliant though. All fast with the roots and the rocks and the roller coaster sections, so fun for me. Scott eventually put a move on Nate, hammering down the root field bit, me on him, pedaling seated, picturing my carbon seatpost snapping off, sending invisible carbon splinters into my backside. The move stuck. Last lap it was just the two of us. I kept thinking about well…The Misfits and something Craig Gaulzetti said before I left the shop Saturday night. He was quoting something Harold Knochen one of the brothers that owns International Bicycle Centers always says to people on their way to a race “You bettah win…it’s mind over matter…you bettah win”. That and I was thinking about how the last time I was close to winning a race a Bethel Cycles rider beat me to the punch. I was kind of adamant that I wasn’t going to allow history to repeat itself so soon.
Scott gapped me going into the last lap, I worked my way back, and just as I caught up to him in a mini-roller section I attacked him, and just hit the gas, taking it up to ‘Cross pace, to one lap of a 24 hour race speed. Laps were taking 24 minutes, that’s not a long time. It’s a long time to put your face on a frying pan for and it’s a long time to go as hard as you can on bike, holding nothing back, leaving it all out there, no let up right to the end.
I was genuinely confused when I crossed the line “Was that five? Do I have another? “. “Nope, that’s it”. In addition to watching The HBO show, I’ve also been watching back to back episodes of 30 Rock (thanks Uri) and all I could come up with as I rode away from the line was “I am a Jedi!”.
Thanks to Michael Mooradian for the bottle hand ups which saved me from using the bucket stand of death once again, and Sean Cavanaugh for the photo work.