Big Bikes

International Men of Misery

Now that we finally have a fourth teammate I can talk about the search for a fourth teammate. What am I even talking about? Well I'm talking about the 24 Hours of Great Glen of course, which is this coming weekend. I found two teammates within hours of deciding to do the thing, Jeff "I won the Vermont 50" Whittingham and Harry "I won the Hampshire 100K" Precourt jumped at the opportunity. But with the Kenda Cup at Mount Snow concurrent with the GG24, finding a fourth Pseudo-Pro mountain biker was going to be tough. The good news was that it was going to be tough for the rival teams as well.

My teammate turned temporary arch-nemesis Colin "I got 2nd as a Cat 5 in The Working Man's Stage Race" Reuter had likely already exhausted all "Cross-Over" possibilities (fast folks from the Cross world who wouldn't even think about going to Mount Snow) and I'm sure he had contacted every Roadie who had any kind of off-roading chops at all. That didn't stop me from bugging them myself. I shot out emails to anyone and everyone that might act as a Ringer for our team. Talks with Matt O'Keefe were going well, but ultimately he fell on the Mount Snow side of the fence. I took it well:

"That's cool, just give up entirely on fun.
You could probably save a lot of money on Kenda Cup registration by paying a homeless guy
to kick you in the nuts repeatedly, then throw you down a flight of stairs. "

I won't run down the entire list of fast mountain bikers-who-might-not-be-going-to-Mount-Snow I bothered but it was substantial.

Then I went big, asking a couple of the fastest people I know if they knew anyone who might want to get all crazy with some 24 hour fun. First I asked Matt and Mo if they knew any Crossers who might want to do the thing. Mo grabbed a couple contacts of the top of her A-List and sent them along to me; Tim Johnson and Jesse Anthony. Asking them to do GG24 wasn't as ridiculous as one might think, they have actually both done it before. They were both gracious enough to return my emails, unfortunately they both had to decline my offer.

Then I went a little Kooky, asking Adam Myerson if he knew anyone, even going so far as to try to coax him into it - hey, when you've got plugs in your ear lobes the size of oil drums and tattoos on your neck you have to do something truly different to turn people's heads once in a while. I know what his attitude toward Mountain Bike racing is though:

"People still do that? If I want to ride around in the woods for two hours by myself with no one watching, I'm not gonna pay for it."

He didn't bite, but he forwarded my plea to Dan "I got second to Jeff Schalk at The Cohutta 100 and I wasn't even trying because I'm a Pro roadie, oh and did I mention that I won Mount Snow as a Semi-Pro?" Vallancourt. But no response there, too bad, talk about a Ringer.

In the end Jeff was able to secure Vermonter Mat Katz as our fourth. I don't know much about Mat myself, all I need to know is that he finished 8th at The Root 66 Mount Snow race two weeks ago which means he's pretty damn quick.

It should be a good, close race, there are three pretty evenly matched teams.

Red jersey cyclery/Michelin/Rocky Mountain

- Bob "Big Ring Bob" Lesmerises
- Brian Moody
- Tom Sampson
- Peter Ostroski

Endo Farmers/ Carbon Fiber Octopus

- Colin Reuter
- Kevin Sweeney
- Rob Stine
- Curtis Boivin

International Men of Misery

- Thom Parsons
- Jeff Whittingham
- Mat Katz
- Harry Precourt


I'm beyond sure that Colin already has a graph charting out what each team's chances are so I won't mess with that, all I know is it's gonna be a WAR! So everybody better bring their A-Game and hope that their B samples don't come up positive, oh because it's ON! Yeah!

And Jess and Chuck, I've got plans for you two. If you don't agree to a secret pact with our team to completely shell yourselves like Fabian Cancellara pulling our riders around the course until you have to finish your lap in the granny ring we will wait until you are inside your tents sleeping and then hit you in your respective faces with shovels.

GG24!