Big Bikes

Inspiration

Since 1998 when I first started messing around with this whole bike racing thing I have consistently found inspiration in the form of other riders. I didn’t come into my own at all until I began single-speeding though, so the riders who lead me in that direction are the ones I think about most. What got me to thinking about this was running into Troy Michaud out at Trek World. At one point he caught me in the singletrack over at Jim’s Trails and passed me, tagging me “You’re it!”. I followed his wheel as best I could, something I could never have come close to doing when he was racing back east. Although he’s not racing seriously at the moment, he still rides circles around me.

I never did get the chance to corner Troy after a few beers and tell him what kind of influence he had on me, “Dude yer da bestest, I’d rather ride bikes with you than the best people in the world”. He was the first guy I saw completely commit to Single-Speeding exclusively. He’d race his SS against geared riders and blow people’s minds. After the race strong Semi-Pro and Pro riders would be scratching their heads and icing their wounded pride after he leveled them on one gear.

This was actually extremely frustrating and baffling to me early on. He flatted at The Landmine race in Hingham, MA one year. I passed him. A little while later he came flying by me, I thought I could easily hang with him because of his “handicap”. Not even close. I seriously had no idea how this worked, how he could pull this stuff off. If he started with the single speed class, he would invariably catch me no matter how much of a head start my field had. Always pushing a monstrous gear with low-knobbed Hutchinson Pythons, his only tire choice no matter the conditions.

In 2004 he capped off a stellar season with an overall win at The Vermont 50 on his rigid Seven single speed with rim brakes. A new day had dawned in mountain biking, my geared world was crumbling around me.

Equal to Troy in the pantheon of Single-Speeding to me is Skip Brown. Skip has always done things his own way. He keeps his training secrets secret because if they were leaked to the general cycling populace, the roads and trails would be strewn with the spent husks of their mangled and over-trained bodies. Street Sweepers would have to be called in to mop up the swaths of cartilage and ligaments from their blown out knees. Skip was an earlier pioneer than Troy with the one gear business, riding his always rigid Seven with a piece of straight frame stock for a handlebar (no sweep for this guy). His grips cannibalized from a set of bolt cutters or something. Hard, unforgiving plastic to be gripped by his small yet preternaturally strong hands which are notably always bare. His brake levers so difficult to operate due to the perpetually seized cables it would take four normal men to work them. Plagued by mechanicals and predisposed to riding off the course several times during a race he would never the less come out on top more often than not.

One more thing about Skip, he was the first guy to push massive gears (that I knew of). 36 X 16 on his 26” bike, unheard of before the Lalondes began their reign of terror. On his way to a 9th place finish in the Open Semi-Pro category at Mt. Snow Nationals a few years ago he pushed “Two to One” because he had “geared down for the course”. Even Jesse and Marko didn’t come close to that feat of strength during their showing on roughly the same course this year. As far as I know he drinks only water during races and eats nothing like high-tech energy foods. During 100 Milers he is known to eat jerky and string cheese.

Details about Skip are hard to come by but every now and then a piece of the puzzle gets added and the picture becomes more clear yet no less bemusing. He is like something out of Tolkien. In a different, completely imaginary time he would live under a mountain and spend all day hammering iron into weapons and killing hill trolls with his always bare hands.

Christopher Igleheart was actually the first person I ever saw riding a single speed. It was purple, I believe, and rigid. I was on a huge Massachusetts North Shore (yes, we have our own “North Shore”, it’s not like B.C. but it is the most grueling slow speed technical, rocky, crazy crap you will find anywhere) group ride. I had no idea how he was keeping up, on the road (leg speed!), in the woods, up the hills, everywhere, it hurt my brain. I was also a punk kid and definitely a bit age-ist. This old dude was kicking my ass.

It wasn’t much later that I ran into Lloyd Graves, one of the founders of Independent Fabrication. He was Single Speeding before it was cool. I had this (stupid) idea that you couldn’t ride technical trails on a single speed, he showed me that this was not the case. Lloyd is still Single Speeding, he’s close to fifty by now, and his knees are still intact, there goes another myth about single-speeding.

These are just the guys I ran into out there, I’m sure there are a whole bunch of others I’m unaware of. I’d love to hear other folks stories of pioneers, legends, and monsters of Single-Speeding.