No Fifty For Me

I'm just going to come out and say it: I will not be doing the Vermont 50 this year. Wow, that felt better than the time, five minutes ago, when I took a shower and expectorated two gallons of phlegm. Too much information you say? Too much fluorescent green mucus I say. The main reason I am not on the start list for The 50 this year is that I have wedding the day before. Now I could go to the wedding, be a total lame-ass, not party, and try to jet out of there early, but I would still party a little and I wouldn't be able to jet out of there early enough to wake up feeling at all not-like-crap for the 6:15 AM start. I would lose on both ends. All my friends at the wedding would still think I was a douche bag and I would have a total shit race. Sunday night I would feel like more of a sad and lonely loser of a man than I normally do. Not worth it.

That knowledge was enough to prevent me from signing up when registration opened back in May. But it was just enough. I still wanted to hit that submit button "just in case." Sort of like how I signed up for SSWCNZ "just in case." I mean, who knows, the wedding could have gotten called off or something. (I'm so glad none of my friends actually read this thing, otherwise Greg would be pissed.) Back in May I couldn't have known that I would be doing the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race either. And, having never done a stage race before, I wouldn't have known that I ride like a tranquilized Himalayan cat the week after a stage race. I also couldn't have known that I would come back to the Boston-ish area completely sick after said stage race. The stupid thing is, if I didn't have this wedding I would no doubt be on that start line Sunday morning oozing phlegm from every orifice.

That's the 50 for me, I do the race almost every year, no matter what, and it's a race that doesn't suit my strengths at all, the reason I am drawn to it is inexplicable. And apparently when asked about The 50 I tend to gush a bit. Both Garth Prosser and Sue Haywood expressed interest in coming up to the race and I told them they absolutely HAD TO do it, that it was the best thing ever. I actually think that Garth could win the thing, it definitely plays to his strengths. That skinny Tinker Juarez look-a-like can climb.

I haven't perused the start list but I'm going to tap Mike Montalbano for the win. With Whittinghammer sidelined with a broken leg (that he rode on for two weeks before noticing) and Jesse Jakomait having transplanted himself to Colorado, it's anybody's race...but mostly Mike's. Although you've also got Doug Jenne who was brilliant at Breck, Will Crissman who has shown some great form recently with a second place at the EFTA Treasure Valley Rally and a sixth place in a stacked field at the Landmine Classic. Then there's The Ramponi, Mike Ramponi, coming off a second place in the scary-fast single speed category at the Wilderness 101. I'm sure all the usual top ten suspects will be there as well: Tyler Merritt, Stephen Humphreys, and Brian Lyster. It should be good, so sad I won't be there to get my ass handed to me by a long line of professional ass-hander-toers.