Sick Boy

No racing for me this weekend. I was planning on doing the Bedford 'Cross race just because it was so close to home, would have been nice just to ride out, but I am home not feeling so swell, trying to get well before The Vermont 50 next week. I did do some exciting stuff to the bike though in anticipation of the upcoming event. Decided to go rigid, got myself a Bontrager Switchblade carbon fork, dropped a good two pounds off the bike. The VT 50 is way more about the climbing than the descending (at least from what I remember) so I hope this choice serves me well. The bike's weighing pretty light at 21.5 lbs. My Rig does have a little secret, it's EBB was modified by Pete Verdone, a huge amount of material was removed, lightening it up significantly. Check it:
PVD Wiki


Still haven't decided on the gearing, I though single speeds were supposed to be simple...amazing how much thought I put into gear selection. It makes sense though, if you're going to be stuck with one gear for a whole race, you better be sure it's the right one. I think it's best to change as many things as possible just before a race, don't do anything the same way twice. Unless you're riding like Adam Craig, then you stop and say "hey, what am I doing so right? I should keep doing that thing". Otherwise, to hell with it, eat weird stuff, change your saddle height, get drunk and go cow-tipping the night before the race, who cares, you'll find what works eventually...hopefully.

Oh, in more exciting news, I found another great SSWC 2007 gallery by
Single Speed Widow
I like how she captured my jaw clenching weirdly, I am a creature.

EFTA NECS #9 Grillz Memorial
Georgetown, ME

“I have seen old Israel's arid plain.
It's magnificent, but so's Maine”

-Jonathan Richman

Last night I had the strangest dream…in the dream I woke up at five in the morning and drove my car up to Maine, out on the peninsula past Bath to Reid State Park, there was mist on the highway , like you’d expect there to be in a dream. It was a beautiful day, I mean absolutely perfect, not beach weather mind you, but sunny and clear about 65° or so, good dream weather. I was driving to a bike race, when I had said good bye to my girlfriend I told her I was going to win (I don’t win many bike races so this was ridiculous) she humored me.
The parking lot for the race was right by the beach, Half Mile Beach and Mile Beach, these were some nice beaches. One reason I knew this was a dream was that I arrived early enough to ride the entire course and warm up, even checking out the hole shot a couple extra times, it was tricky, I’d probably be off the bike doing some ‘cross practice. The course, dream course, dream conditions…sorry, but it’s true. The roots were wet, the mud was rideable, there were lots of tricky moves to make, real mountain biking type stuff, up over slimy rocks, down rooty drops, slippery bridges, then you’d get a slight respite as you spun out (on a single speed anyway) down this nicely graded path before you hit the real craziness along a raised pipeline. A slip and you could easily gore your leg on one of the many pipe fittings. This section was pure upper body and balance, all rocks and roots, with a couple forced run-ups (crossin’ it up baby!) .

This is the way to roll

This dream wasn’t perfect, I’d run out of accelerade, just the type of thing which messes with a geeky racer’s head, I’d be running on Gatorade and flat coke. I balmed up my legs with some mace ointment and went to line up at the start. There were maybe six guys there, then they told us we’d be let out in waves with Open Elite going first, everyone but three other dudes backed up. So it was me CCB Pro (15th at Nats) Matt O’keefe, Andrew Freye (also Pro), and some other guy who looked strong but from what I saw on the warm up lacked the technical skills necessary to really do well at this race. I was gunning for third, the highest spot on the podium I’ve ever reached at one of these things.
Then with thirty seconds to go, Michael Patrick (Pro, 8th at Master’s Worlds, no joke either) comes screaming down the course at us and wips his bike in line. Now it was five of us and I would have to fight for that podium spot, this dream was turning into a nightmare.
The start was slightly uphill so I was able to hang, hopping on Freye’s wheel, they sent us out into the parking lot to break things up before the hole shot, we basically went out and around a barrel and back to where we came, O’keefe’s up there asking us which way to go, I’m not usually at the front of the race, so this banter was surprising, things seemed pretty relaxed. We came blasting into the woods, a gap already opening up behind us. I couldn’t believe the speed O’keefe was going into this stuff at, one minute in and he was opening the gap, Freye was just ten seconds ahead, I was trying to stay locked on him. He’d bobble, I’d gap up, then I’d bobble, he’d gap away, then we hit the dirt road/path section and he opened it right up, this was what I had feared, that section would be my undoing.

I've made a few changes in the latter part of the season, something seems to be working, don't know if it's the Multi-Vitamins or the new Deodorant

There were a couple minutes of light climbing just before the pipeline section, there I was able to close it down on Freye, conscious Thom P. could never do this, but dreamland Thom P. was able to pull it off. A ways into the gnarliness (look it up in your Laird Hamilton dictionary) I was right on Freye’s wheel when he got stopped by something in his path, he let me come around and I was able to open a small gap and extend it to maybe ten seconds by the time we came through the start finish. The roles were reversed but the situation was the same as lap one, gaps opening and closing all the while, there were a couple small, rooty power climbs before the anti-singlespeedy dirt road bit, I drilled them, I wanted to get some air between me and Freye before I got there. But even still just a minute into the pipeline Freye was breathing down my neck, but then I heard the words of Mike Ramponi’s brother in his thick Boston accent “why can’t you just go HAAA-DER!?!”, so I did, dream legs responding very well. So I alternated riding like a Ninja and a Jedi, maybe even using some of my “Gymkata” skills through this section and by the end the gap was bigger than the previous lap.
Lap three I spent alone, just trying to figure some stuff out, real deep stuff like “if there’s tree in the forest and a rider going twenty miles per hour comes by riding in a straight line and whacks the ever-living beejesus out of his shoulder on it, did the tree move or did the rider miscalculate the corner?” This being a dream (yes, we’re still going with that premise, bear with me) it is quite possible that it was an Enchanted Tree or an Ent or something so we may never know, it’s tough when you mix mathematical calculations that sound like lame philosophical questions with delusion and fantasy.
Spectators kept giving me weird gap estimations to O’keefe, “oh ya, like a minute, maybe forty seconds, you’re closing it down”. I thought that he must just be riding as fast as he needed to and not any faster, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of me he’d drop it into warp speed and be gone again, if the gap info was accurate at all. O’keefe has beaten me in the past by as much as fifteen or twenty minutes so I was psyched just to be this close, one flat or mechanical and I’d be on him. I still had the typically late surging Michael Patrick to worry about as well, I expected to see him hauling ass up the dirt road behind me, and Freye was out of sight but still a major threat.
Going into the fourth and final lap, not too far into the first technical part, I can’t believe my eyes, there’s O’keefe sidelined with a flat, he was just pulling the wheel off, I had moved into the the lead, yikes, now what? During the Tour coverage Phil and Paul always talk about how the yellow jersey changes a rider, I felt it in my microcosm of bike racing up in Maine. O’keefe could still catch me, I could flat, crash, or an Asian drug lord could have hidden venomous snakes in my seat tube and spiked my water bottles with pheromones to infuriate them so they’d bite me, anything, and I mean anything I could happen.
But nothing did happen, I did ride myself into the ground by the very end of lap, I was bouncing off everything in my path, breathing like a fat kid running from a serial killer that specializes in killing fat kids exclusively. I came across the line and did what I’d meant to do last Saturday at the end of the short track “BYAAH!”. Then I probably swore, so I apologize if I taught any children something they haven’t already heard from Kanye West or Grand Theft Auto.
Then I pinched myself and woke up, went over to the officials and asked them if I had actually just won the Open Elite race, they told me I had. As I stood there Freye came across the line followed shortly thereafter by Patrick, and then O’Keefe, this was going to be one weird looking result.

I try out the new line of IBC swim wear, it works for the Maine coast

Just to make sure I was awake I went down to the Atlantic Ocean and began wading in, the surf was high, maybe four feet, surfers were surfing, I was in up to my knees, cursing the frigid waters when a wave came in, knocked me right on my ass, then proceeded to drag me out twenty yards, filling my bib shorts with sand and sea robbins (OK fine, no sea robbins). Now I was awake, this whole day hadn’t been a dream, I’d won my first EFTA race and although the field had been small it was pretty stacked, I’d take it damnit.

NORBA Root 66
Landmine Classic Marathon
Hingham, MA

It had cooled down quite a bit since Saturday, it rained during the night, it was now a tolerable 70 or so degrees. On Saturday I’d run a 32 X 16, the biggest gear I’d ever run on the 29, today I was running a 32 X 17, I thought with the virtually flat, technical terrain it might be ideal. Wompatuck completely changes character with the slightest drop of moisture, the roots which you can rail over in the dry become slippery as buttered newts in the wet.
There were a whole lot of folks signed up for the Open Marathon, split into a couple age categories, the toughest guys looked to be Brian Hughes and John Foley, a few other fast dudes opted for the Pro/Semi-Pro race, but with The Vermont 50 looming, I thought this would be an ideal preparation ride at 44 miles, no climbing, but some good saddle time.
From the gun I followed Foley, Hughes, and a Bike Barn rider off the front, by the time we made it to the singletrack we had a decent gap, I was just sitting on Foley’s wheel, waiting to see what moves he would make. I was just happy to be there, like the dude in Breaking Away riding with the Italian riders, I was just waiting for someone to stick a pump in my spokes. The Bike Barn rider pulled away, Hughes right on him, Foley sat tight so I did the same. When we hit the open fire road Foley accelerated away, getting the gap and going clear.
After that I was in no man’s land for a while, trying not to lose motivation on this, the first of two 22 mile laps. There were still all those unknown guys behind me. I’ve been to Wompatuck about five times, all for races, and usually the same race course. People would tell me that there was so much more going on out there than what we got to see on the course. With the 22 mile lap format we were getting to see some of that stuff…and it was good. It had a bunch of whoops, twisty singletrack, super-techy bits, rock gardens, and roots, lots of roots. All that yet surprisingly fast.
I heard someone clacking up behind me, I felt the wind going out of my sails, I was getting caught by a rider from one of the groups that started a minute back. This wasn’t the case, it was Foley, he’d gone slightly off course and he was coming back up to me. This time I was able to hold his pace, even relaxing and recovering in the singletrack a little. We came through the end of the first lap together, grabbed a couple bottle from our coolers and kept on.

As we went up one of the few small “hills” John bobbled on a stone wall, I wrestled my bike past him up and over the top. Now I had the fear, I was running like hell from John, while hopefully chasing down the two ahead. Now I was racing, just riding those trails as hard and fast as I possibly could, it felt good. I’d been fading at some races earlier in the season, this was not my style, I think it had to do with my light miles during July, but after the one-two of the 101 and the 24 I was feeling great. I started hunting the other two, Danzig playing in my head, oh ya kid, you know what I’m talking about! I kept getting weird info on the gaps, three minutes, four minutes, that’s no good. Then I came up on Brian Hughes, he said he was handicapped, and sat up. Still one more ahead… with what I figured was about twenty minutes to go I was still hearing “three minutes”, insurmountable gap for certain.
When I came across the slippery wooden bridge just before the field where the start/finish was I went past my buddy Greg,
he said the leader had just gone through, urgh!
In reality I was a minute down, not sure if I could have closed that down with what little I had left in the tank. The guy who won was John Peterson, he also finished four places ahead of me at Fitchburgh, interesting.
Sorry for the oddly pragmatic report, suppose I’m rushing through it because really wan t to write about the race I did just this morning, check back later for that.

NORBA Root 66 Landmine Classic
Short Track
Hingham, MA

Here I am again, the night before another race and I still have yet to blawg it up about last week’s events, I must break the cycle of procrastination now. Brue and I arrived back in Boston from SSWC, Scotland last Thursday night. Friday we went by Independent Fabrication for a quick tour then shot up to the exotic Middlesex Fells Reservation for a rocky 95° ride. Brue was impressed, the relentless technical was alien to him…I wish he’d been able to ride it in the wet.
Saturday AM we headed down to Wompatuck for the big, crazy short track race and NEMBA Fest. We were running late. The drive into the park dragged on and on, we jumped out of the car, that field was just baking, it had to be a solid 100°, we scrambled to get chamoised up, dashing over to registration, no time for a warm up, crap! The race was delayed…for TWO HOURS. Brue had to be at Logan and on a plane at 6, with the 1 O’clock start time this was doable, now it was looking just plain stupid. I called Miriam my “Rick” (like Magnum’s buddy who always called in one last mob favor, c’mon, you remember) she did some quick calculations, checked flight status, and told me it was just barely reasonable, any contingency and we were sunk.
While we waited we went over and saw Mark And Bill at the Trek/Fisher demo truck, we took out a couple bikes. We’d do a quick loop of the short track course then sit in the shade and pant for a bit. The new 69er geared hard tail is pretty sweet as is the Hi-Fi 29er, that thing is like driving a skidder through the woods, just crush everything in your path, amazing. They didn’t have the new Rig, I’m itching to see what if feels like with the G2 Geometry and Fox F-29, guess I’ll have to wait until I get mine in December, that fleshtone color scheme ain’t too shabby either.
Finally it was time to roll, I was so glad that I’d downed a bottle of pedialyte the night before, it was bound to save my ass. No one was at the start line…the race had been delayed again, this time twenty minutes, contingency number one. We lined up, me and two other Semi-Pros, Brue and Paul Curley making up the Expert Single Speed class, and a bunch of Experts in rows behind us, no head start for the foxes, the hounds would be breathing right down our necks from the gun. Brue didn’t know what it meant that he was racing against Curley, I tried to explain, told him whatever he did not to pass Paul on the outside of a corner, unless he wanted to eat some dirt.
A moment of inattention and the race was off, me with my feet both planted flatly on the ground, Brue took the hole shot! Paul was right on him, like the pit bull he is, I muscled into 3rd as we took the first few pine needly corners. I passed Paul in the field pushing 32 X 16 on the 29” wheels, Paul in a mere 32 X 18 on a 26er. Brue hit the singletrack first, there was no opportunity to pass in there so I just sat on him throwing encouragement forward, when we hit the pavement I shot past telling him to grab my wheel. He was only pushing a 34 X 18 so a gap opened before I got to the one little climb on the course.
For the first couple laps my lead was just a few seconds, but every corner gave me a bit more space. Soon the chase group had changed it’s face, behind me, all I saw was a white goatee bearing down on me, later I realized that this was Stuart Jensen, one of the baddest Masters around. Soon we were ten minutes into a twenty five minute race, fifteen minutes to go…you can do anything for fifteen minutes right? It was hot, my head felt like a tomato and it was all tingly. I kept it floored, trying my best to ride like a ninja, threading through the rocky corners as smoothly as I could.
At the end of the twenty five minutes I had a decent gap, I rolled across the line, performing some lame version of a victory salute, what an ass, the first time I win a race with enough space to do something goofy and I blow it. In retrospect I would have liked to have done a little Chapelle “BYAAH!” across the line.
There was no time to wait around for podiums and kiss girls, I had to get buddy Brue to the plane. It was close (especially when I had to pass a lethargic RV in the ditch while exiting the park) I lied to him the whole way about how golden we were, we made it, but at no time was the pressure off…life imitates bike racing.

SSWC 2007 Aviemore Scotland

SSWC 2007 Gallery


Riding in Circles Around Trees

Where to begin, if I begin at the beginning this will just take way too long so I’ll fast forward through to the middle part, the racing part…with only the vaguest of details provided for anything else. In fact I’m going to sum up everything that happened prior to the race weekend in one insanely long run on sentence, here goes.
My buddy Brue flew in from Cali Wednesday AM, lame tour of town was given, got back on plane, flew to Glasgow via Iceland, Glasgow much nicer than we’d both been told, lovely place, spent the night at cousin Pam Hall’s house in Mearnskirk, beautiful place, slept eleven hours, set out for Edinburgh, missed two trains, arrived in Edinburgh, met another cousin Jennifer at her café, very cool (she gave me the title for this post), spent the night in town, amazing place, headed up to Aviemore by train the following day, met some single speeders on the train one turned out to be Jenn Hopkins, one of the fastest ladies in the U.K. (she didn’t let on), arrived in Aviemore with no place to to stay and no plan whatsoever, no worries within ten minutes we had booked rooms at The Bunkhouse for Friday and Sunday, Saturday we’d still have to work out, within twenty minutes we were chamoised up and in our silly suits tagging along on a big group ride…alright I’ll slow down now.
Leading the ride was Deejay Birtch, a familiar face from the states, he’d been out on a ride with some folks the day before and was confident he could find his was around. We ended up getting lost but like Burt Reynolds said in Deliverance “Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything” and that’s some good screenwriting. It was a nice way to begin meeting people, all that waiting, it also provided an opportunity to take in the scenery and feed the Midges (with our blood). It was also chance to begin using our bad Scottish accents, making American Werewolf in London references; “stay off the moors…stay on the road”. We made it out alive, the trails were looking good, and it was time for our first trip of many to Café Mambo.
The Single Speeders were not the only rabble rousing knuckleheads in town that weekend. When I booked our room at The Bunk House the woman warned that it would be noisy because of the “big event”. “Oh, you mean Single Speed Worlds?” “No The Big Splash”. This was Aviemore’s annual festival, it entails jumping anything from Kayaks, to skis, to shopping carts off a huge wooden ramp into the river while the locals get sotted and rock out to bad cover bands. So when I came out of Mambo two kids from Colorado came up and told me that a group of drunk local kids had tried to carry my bike away, but the wheel was locked to the frame so they had to drag it clumsily down the sidewalk. There were fifty singlespeeders out front of the pub so it didn’t much more than friendly suggestion to dissuade them from their criminal master plan. Shortly after I got back to the Bunk house I got up to use the bathroom, only problem with that was that I wasn’t awake, I didn’t wake up until I was in the stairwell. Took me a second to figure out where I was and get back to my room, Dan from Tucson let me in…he was certain I had used the hall way as a toilette…not this time anyway.
Saturday we did another group ride, saw some of the same stuff, some different, when we got back to Bothy Bikes the Rollapaluza guys were there with their roller race rigs. Brue and Hopped up and up some good times. We knew this had something to do with the venue selection process for next year but we knew it would involve more than what we saw.
Rollapaluza


That night the party started at Café Mambo and eventually moved over to The Vault.
Things started out pretty lame, the music was awful, the place was empty but within a couple hours it was jumpin’. The last thing I remember from the Vault was moshing to Motorhead, next thing I knew I was eating bad gas station sandwiches, listening to sotted locals threaten each other “Aye, c’mere, I’m gonna put yer arse up my FIST!”, and talking to Chris from Ontario about his work as a human shield. After that I met some kids from Aberdeen, they took me to their illegal tent city and we had a few more beers and I learned about “Wiggly Wigs”. I still don’t know what it means, I may never know. The plan was to leave the room key (in actuality a high tech room card) on the ground outside the hotel room window. I made a few passes around the building, nothing, I crawled around the building sifting through the grass with my hands, it was getting cold, the dew was so thick it was like rain, I tried to figure out exactly which room was mine, I though I’d have to pound on the window to get in. As I tried to work this out I saw the room card…stuck to the window with a sticker. But my ordeal was not over, when I got inside it was pitch black, there had been some discussion on reconfiguring the beds to accommodate three (they were two small singles) I wasn’t sure about how Dan and Brue were oriented and to make any lights work you had to insert the room card into the slot…which I couldn’t find to save my life. Ultimately Brue became fed up with my blind crashing and turned the lights on, it was now 4AM, awesome.
Three hours later I woke up, not sober, ate a Clif bar, drank half a cup of instant crap coffee, and looked down at my still full water bottle from the night before, not good. We were down at Bothy bikes shortly, and what would become an hour and a half roll out began. Probably should have eaten more, oops. We came to a stop, and threw or bags and jackets on a large blue tarp and the racer meeting began, all I remember “First rool, eef yew don wan theh tah-tew, don feckin’ win!”. Translation “if you don’t want the tattoo, don’t win”. In case you didn’t know the winner of SSWC gets a mandatory tattoo.
We cruised up the fire road a ways for the Lemans start, I was in mid-conversation with Matt and Jimbo from Nittany Wheelworks when the race went off, I just tried to finish the run without breaking my damn ankles. When I came to the piles of bikes I started yelling “has anyone seen a black Fisher Rig? It’s black and it’s a Fisher, it says Fisher on it” this didn’t help. I was way off the back already, surprisingly so was Adam Craig, he came blazing up behind me in his crazy get up, I drafted up him until the hill, where he pulled away from me with his slow cadence, moving deceptively fast with his enormous gear. I made up some spots on the climb and began to see some familiar people as I got into the singletrack.
My first impression was that this course was way more dangerous than your average XC course, I liked it. There were drops, really technical uphills, wet roots everywhere, all sorts of caziness. I might forget to say it later so I’ll say it now, this was one of the best courses if not the best course I’ve ever seen, absolutely amazing. By the second lap I was already cramping and I was almost out of water, I came through the start finish begging for water, nothing, beer, whiskey, no water. The climb was feeling bad, but I couldn’t wait to get back into those trails, question was, when would I get lapped by Craig?

Go HERE for more photos of SSWC 2007 from Simond Barnes

The whole thing was kind of a blur, at various points I was riding with Shaggy a super-fast Brit, Matt Ferrari, and Deejay Birtch, eventually I was with just Shaggy, he was leading when his bike went Ping! I came around him and I guess he subsequently flatted. After that I saw no one except Matt, a young Welshman, he was pushing a huge gear and somehow not slipping on the root fields. I caught a glimpse of the end of the top ten, but I couldn’t close it down, my legs were freaking out. Third lap I took a beer feed, then a woman handed me a bottle of orange Urn Bru, orange soda I think, I drank it gladly.

On the fifth lap as I came up the last little rise my legs cramped in multiple places simultaneously, I was given a slight push to the line, coming across with my legs locked solid. I had to be helped off my bike and put in a seated position. A second later I was told I had to move because more riders were coming in, I lifted my butt off the ground like a paraplegic and shimmied my way off to the side.
Only the top five spots were really recorded but by all accounts I was 11th (yeah! Top 11) on the bike. Later at the award ceremony I was given the Rockstar Award because of my exploits the night prior to the race and the fact that I wasn’t lapped by Adam Craig. They gave out a separate award fro the dude who simply got the most hammered, that guy was still asleep as the awards went off…he slept through the race, now that’s dedication.
After the race I wolfed a massive amount of Fish And Chips, took a dive while riding down a flight of stairs which nearly put me in the ER, and had a small nap.
That night the Vault went off again then spilled out into a derby, a drunk spectator walked straight into me before it even began so I hopped back in until I got properly knocked off. After that it was on to the skidding contest where it was all fun and games until a guy on a borrowed bike didn’t realize the brakes were set up U.K. style, so he grabbed a fistful of front brake as he threw all his weight over the bars, ending in a terrifying face slide. He walked it off but I have feeling dude must have had to make a trip to the hospital later on.
That’s about it for SSWC 2007 details, I could go on about all the silly tourist stuff, but I’ll just stop here, thanks for reading.
Thanks to Pam and Ian Hall for everything, Jennifer Robertson for dinner and laughs, Dan from Tucson for the Hotel hook up, and to all the folks that put this event together.

EFTA NECS #8 The Pinnacle

“When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.”

- The Sphinx (from Mystery Men)

This is perhaps the finest race in the EFTA series, the most climbing the most technical, the most dangerous, the most absolutely epic. It’s like Mount Snow except the climbing doesn’t quite blow as badly, it’s more interesting at least. This was Miriam’s first big outing since the accident, her vacuum dressing pack has a twelve hour charge which gave us plenty of time to get up to Newport, NH and back. I’d been out the day before giving my bike a bit of a shakedown, more for my imminent trip to SSWC in Scotland than this race. I’d changed a lot of stuff, saddle height, fore-aft position (trying to compensate for repositioning of EBB due to gear change), and I have to say the “sensations” from my legs were not feeling good. Could have been the ninety plus temperatures or the 100 Brazilian percent humidity, I don’t know, my hopes for a good result were not high.
We blasted up to Newport, singing along to Gram Parsons on the stereo, it was a beautiful day, and legs or no I was psyched about this race, if I couldn’t put up a fight I would at the very least get in some good training for the VT 50 doing the three lap, close to thirty mile Elite class race. The race is held at Newport High School and like all High Schools in New Hampshire they have their very own enormous network of grade A singletrack and an Olympic style ski jump (you ride down the landing ramp for the old ski jump during the race, it’s nuts). We pulled into the parking lot, immediately ran into Jeff and Jenn Whittingham, adorable,baby Seneca in tow. Jeff was coming off a heavy training week prepping for the Shenandoah 100 but he, as usual had a sack of hammers with him and butter fingers…cuz he’s going to drop the hammer, get it? Drunks and small children think I’m funny.
So we do a little course recon/warm up, I give my parents the lowdown on giving bottle hand ups, then head over to the racer meeting. There I run into Paul Simoes, my favorite single speed nemesis, I notice something shiny on his front tire, it was a tack. Paul is known for his turrets syndrome like outbursts of profanity and this caused him to wind up into a full on tirade. My grandmother reads this thing so I won’t add more detail here. He was sweating as he pulled it out “I’ve got no Stan’s in there, is it going to let the air out?”. He went ahead and removed it, the tire seemed to be holding, which was a good thing with six minutes the race start.
The Elite filed was looking large and pretty stacked, lots of the usual suspects and some not so usual. Less dudes than last year opted for the shorter 2 lap Expert Age Category race. The whistle blew, I shot off the right side, took the inside line around the tennis courts and ended up in second or third position behind Jeff coming by the finish area, had to show off for the parents right? I knew this was a joke so I let all the fast guys come around before we hit the opening climb. I was pinned just trying to stay in contact, as we entered the singletrack I counted at least ten riders in front of me, Paul and some other people were behind me, but not many. When we hit the first really substantial climb I passed a couple folks, and when I got to the new switch-backy section I could see Jeff and Kurt Schmid up about thirty or forty seconds ahead. Michael Patrick (fresh off a top ten at Master’s Worlds in France, ya guy) gapped up to me, his jet-lagged legs apparently were taking a while to start firing. I was happy to attend another one of his clinics, compared to this guy I ride a bike like George Bush rides a Segway scooter (or a bicycle for that matter, I wonder if that Scottish cop ever recovered from his presidential rundown). I slipped and slid my way around the wet root covered course for most a lap with Michael, my heart rate spiked like a Moto GP rider going into a corner at 180mph.
Just as we got to the real nastiness, the Pinnacle peak’s big brother, there were a couple of fast guys sidelined, looked like their bikes were intact and they still had all their appendages but they weren’t riding anymore, sweet, two places farther away from DFL!

“You must've torn out the "Q" section in my dictionary, because I don't know the meaning of the word "quit".

-Mr. Furious (again from the surprisingly crappy despite it’s excellent cast film Mystery Men)

When the really gnarly climbing began I could see Jeff and Kurt again, I tried to stay on Michael but he was gapping me left and right. I thought if I could just stay on him he would drag me up to the two ahead…but I lost it. Then I though I’d catch up on the descent, which was extra awesome by the way, crazy downhill berms and flagstones, wicked steep corners, even some of the elite guys were running them. I kept waiting to catch a glimpse of Jeff and Kurt (I knew Patrick was long gone), but no such dice. I saw Uber-fast Matt O’Keefe first, he had double flatted and had decided to bag it, sweet again because if he so chose he could have ridden back to my wheel and beyond even after such a setback. Then I ran into Jeff, he was hardly moving through a rock garden, he’d broken his pedal, tough break, he was out for sure. Redemption will come at The Shenandoah 100 for him without a doubt, he’ll have that much more fire in the legs next week, watch out now.
As I passed the finish chute and grabbed my feed from Jenn Whittingham I heard that I was forty seconds off third, what? How did this happen, where did everybody go? However Paul Simoes was not far behind, I saw him on the other side of the tennis courts at the bottom of the plummet thingy, less than minute.
I rode the second lap alone, in no man’s land, that’s about it…onto the third lap,
this is called “streamlining”.
This time through the feed I grabbed a bottle from my Dad, he told me third was just ahead and sure enough…up the climb ahead I saw Kurt Schmid’s yellow jersey, he still had a decent gap but I started working to bring it down, and it wasn’t happening easily. On the switchback climb section I timed Kurt at twenty seconds, it looked like more, there was another rider ahead of him who looked tough, who could that be? In the section where you’re basically riding over stone walls, down stone walls, over wet bridges made up of small logs I was able to get up to the other rider, the not Kurt rider and pass him, I guess Kurt had done the same. This poor bloke had put his bottle stand up the start loop, not realizing we wouldn’t be going back there again.
I got real close to Kurt in this stuff, but he kept getting the gap back, maybe he’d read a book on how to stick it to a single speeder, I don’t know but whatever he was doing he was getting away. I started to come up to him on the meanness around the second peak but this terrain wore me down, too many steep climbs in quick succession, kept me anaerobic for far too long. I looked at my watch as I am came across the top of the peak, navigating the technical singletrack, I figured there was about fifteen minutes of racing left to go…you can do almost anything for fifteen minutes.
Contact with Kurt was finally made as we came down off the peak, problem…I was running out of single speed friendly trail to attack Kurt in. I thought hard, where are there anymore hills? I could think of just two…that would have to do. I stayed right on Kurt’s wheel railing through the twisty, rooty craziness, we shot out onto the fire road climb leading up to the point where the course crosses itself. The grade is only a few percent but I was able to get on top of my gear, say a quick “hey how ya doin?” to Kurt and spin past him, I could hear a small gap opening but he was still right there, I thought “must maximize gear!” and really tried to spin it out up this thing like I was going across a flat field. At the trail juncture it kicked up before reentering the singletrack, I pegged it, full throttle up the thing, gap was happening, then, just as I got into the mouth of the singletrack a lapped rider bobbled in front of me, Kurt was back on me like Angelina Jolie on and orphan from an exotic country. Time was running out, I kept picturing that long flat run in to the finish around the tennis courts where Matt Hearsey had dusted me years before after I let him get into the singletrack before me at the top of the climb, history was going to repeat itself.
I was going as hard as possible, taking every chance, at one point I came up over this root-covered whoop, I heard Kurt dab behind me, I attacked, just trying to get the psychological gap. It seemed to stick, every corner gave me a bit more space, no nearly enough, I was in a panic. What saved me was the fire road transition between the last two sections of singletrack, it was this nasty little wall of a climb BAM! Up it I went, bike rocking back and forth beneath me, tongue wagging, drool strings flailing, Fu Manchu’s cover of Devo’s “Freedom of Choice” blaring in my head:

“In ancient rome there was a poem
About a dog who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead”

The gap was got, all I had to do was not die on the way down to the Pinnacle Plummet (the old ski jump run out). I saw Jeff as I came out onto the fire road just before the final descent, he attempted to take a photo with my ailing Digital Elph, you can see me at the bottom of the frame, a spec in the distance.
I came over the top of The Plummet, no brakes, flew down at forty-something miles per hour, went sliding around the corner of the tennis courts, and spun my way frantically toward the line, I didn’t bring my cadence down from fixed gear descending Mt. Washington pace until I was around the next corner and I could see Kurt coming off The Plummet, I was safe. I rolled in, my Dad telling me that I “looked like ‘hell’” that’s always a good sign that you left it all out there.
Kurt came in thirty seconds later, we congratulated each other for our respective rides, the guy’s a class act all the way, he’s gotten the better of me most times we’ve gone head to head which made the battle that much more meaningful.
Thanks to Miriam, Jeff, Jenn, Seneca, and my Mom and Dad for coming out and giving support, you guys all rock.
I'm off to Single Speed Worlds in Aviemore Scotland tonight, check back next week for the full story.

24 Hours of Great Glen

Another race, yet another way too early morning, might seem funny that I always complain about the same thing, it’s just that I am designed on a biological level to wake up no earlier than 8AM, regardless of when I went to bed. I never ceases to cause me pain. It was up at 5AM for this one, had to make a 10Am meet time up at Pinkham Notch, NH, no problem right? Stay tuned.

I went around the corner to pick up my neighbor Greg Montello who had, after a long and nearly fruitless search decided to be our fourth man on our four man pro team.
Already the car was looking jam packed and we still had to pick up Andy Sanidas, we began streamlining the gear in anticipation. We met Andy at the park and ride in Newbury port, packed the Volvo to the gills, even compression strapping three wheels to the roof rack horizontally to get the job done.
OK, everybody in the car, turn the key and go! And…go! Nothing. The battery was dead, oh crap. First thought was to run across the street and see if the gas station had a portable jumper, Andy went ahead and ripped the battery out of his car and had it in the Volvo and nicely gift wrapped before I could even make it to the curb. And…go! We were off. Of course the stereo wouldn’t work without the code (which I didn’t have) all the sweet playlists I’d made for my ipod were rendered useless. Bad breaks, set backs. Natural fact is, brother that I can’t find my chapstick.


We made it to registration with a modicum of time to spare, met our remaining teammate Jeff Whittingham, and began to set up camp. It was hot as hell as Jeff lined up for the Lemans start, the rest of us were off pre-riding the course, hoping to wrap it up before a charging Whittingham came bearing down on us. We got back in time to watch Jeff come in, hot on the heels of Matt Boobar (fast guy from the competition), we were off to a good start. I’ve learned that you basically don’t pay any attention to what’s going on until half way through the race, that’s when lap times start to matter, until then just ride your ass off, go as fast as you can, hopefully you can recover and do it again…another eight times before the day is through.

32 X 17, that was the gear I had decided to start with, I didn’t recall that this race was very hilly, that gear made it hilly enough, after two laps I dropped down to a 32 X 18, familiar and much more comfortable, whatever I was losing on the flat fire roads I was making up by not being bogged down on the climbs so bad. The course was dry, fast, and only slightly different than the previous two years I’d done this thing. They’d put in a little piece of nastiness on the bit of trail across the road, a couple super-steeps that put the “stupid” in single-speed, I had to run it on a couple of the laps which actually left me more recovered for the next climb and the singletrack which followed.

We lead the race until dark, at that point the other Pro team had begun to hack away out our lead, then Greg had a light mishap which cost him a few minutes, his headlamp was stuck on blinking mode which is more dangerous than not having a light at all, turns the trail into a bike disco, not ideal. The tables had turned, MTB Mind took the lead and went with it, we’d bring it down to a few minutes then they’d take it back, it was always just out of reach, like an invisible bunny rabbit.
My first couple night laps were significantly slower (4 or 5 minutes slower), oddly enough on my fourth and final night lap my headlamp went out almost immediately (I hadn’t charged it after my prior lap…hey it’s got a three hour charge right? Right.) leaving me with only a bar mount light. I don’t normally run two lamps so it was good I had this at all but having your only light source attached to your bar is pretty silly, you go over a bump, it illuminates the trees above, you twist through some rocks or roots, it shows you the rock three feet to your right, not the one directly in front of your wheel. Sweet! That said, this was my fastest night lap (the first doesn’t count it was really a dusk lap, hardly used my light at all) I think this was due to the fact that I crashed blindly through all the singletrack then in a state of panic absolutely railed the fire roads and climbs, taking every chance available. That was a 42 minute lap, the two before were about 45’s, go figure.

The night laps were kinda magical, the Mica in the soil reflected the light off your lamps, the sky looked like a planetarium, and the mist in the early part of the course was so dense it was hard to stay on the fire road. It’s inevitable during a 24 to have a sort of down lap, a low point where it’s hard to get motivated, near impossible to peal yourself off your sleeping pad and get your ass back on your bike. Usually it’s around dawn for me but I hit my low early on this night, every bone ached, my muscles were seized, I thought I’d overcooked it way too early, that I wouldn’t get it back, I was going to let all my teammates down, let myself down, I got on the bike and did a 45, I wasn’t stoked. I did end up getting it back and my remaining laps were as fast or faster than the earlier ones, funny how that happens.

The food situation was great, it’s important to keep it light, a 4 Man relay isn’t an endurance event so much as eight or nine ‘cross races with a two hour break between each. I was mostly doing PB & J, cereal with blueberries and banana, chocolate milk, and cookies. A highlight was Chris Igleheart coming up and cooking hot pasta and sauce, stuff like that is key. Even more spectacular was the tar black coffee he brewed up in the morning, thanks Chris.

By morning the other team’s gap was still holding, we were still fighting but hope was fading. It had been down around fifty degrees during the night, by eleven O’clock it the temperature skyrocketed to over ninety. Andy had to have had the hottest lap, Montello came in just before noon, standing on the other side of the start tent, taunting Andy “do you wanna do the lap or not?”. If he waited until noon Andy wouldn’t have to go, Andy coaxed Greg across the threshold of pain and he took off on what was basically a ceremonial lap, just so we would finish on the same lap as the other team.


Breaking down camp was perhaps the hardest part of the weekend, all of us began feeling lightheaded and sapped in the midday heat, it was slow going.
When we’d gotten things pretty squared away we started to walk over to the big tent to see what was going on, I grabbed my phone to see if I could get some reception so I could call Miriam. As I walked I heard the text message beep, I checked it, it was from Miriam, it was this vague message telling me to call her after the race, it was important, but not to worry. This left me bemused and I thought I should walk across the street and see if I could call her. Just then Darcy McGuire ran up behind me, she had received a message from Miriam as well, she told me M had been an accident, that I had to call her. Oh crap. I called her, she told me what happened. She was riding at Massabesic in New Hampshire, she had attempted this thing called “The Log Roll” she cleared it then ate it in the run out, her leg connected with something hard and sharp, it acted like a Hutu’s machete, peeling back a three inch deep, six inch wide, ten inch long slab of her lower thigh. Crazy. She had gone to the ER in Manchester, they sewed her up too tight with bacteria trapped inside, I’ll spare you the rest,
Long story short, she’ll be OK, she just needs to spend a couple weeks attached to a vacuum dressing system.

Wait, did I say that breaking camp was the hardest part of the day? Perhaps it was… after the drive home which was prolonged by weekend traffic, I didn’t sleep at all, not since 5AM Saturday, the only thing that got me through was a huge Coolata from Dunkin’ Donuts, those things are good for something. When we stopped for food I wanted to put my head down on the table and pass out in a puddle of my own drool like I was back in remedial 7th grade math class. The stereo was still out so Montello kept me awake by serenading me with some wonderful songs from the eighties, I knew he was good for something (that and some scorching fast laps during the race) .We still had to deal with the battery swap mess back in Newburyport, this involved a trip to Kmart where I made my self useful by buying Dora the Explorer slippers for my niece while Andy figured out what battery we needed. To make matters worse Andy had left his car keys in a bag which had found it’s way into someone else’s car. Luckily his wife came to the rescue and Greg and I continued on to Somerville ready for hot showers and clean sheets.
Team Go Ugly Early went to Great Glen to win, this didn’t happen but it was an honorable and spirited defeat, we didn’t let the other guys walk away with it. This was a great group of guys to ride with, the team dynamic was flawless, moral was always high, I can’t wait to roll with this posse again.

Independent Fabrication STEEL Crown Jewel for Sale

Miriam is selling her I.F....

Price: $1000.00 (complete -pedals)
Size: 49cm seat tube, 51cm top tube
Ultegra 9 speed drivetrain/shifters
Wheels: Mavic CXP 33's laced to Ultegra hubs
Includes everything pictured, I won't bore you with the complete breakdown.

I've gone over it, it's in great shape, no dents,
paint is in good shape, it's tuned and ready to go.

Shoot me an email at thomp2000@gmail.com if you're interested.

This Procrastination's Saving Grace

Ya so I haven't quite got my Great Glen 24 report together yet. Been a little distracted...my favorite girl in the world got banged up last saturday out on her mountain bike. She went down hard after cleaning a thing they call "The Log Roll" up at Massabesic in New Hampshire. What happened to her leg is about the closest thing to a machete wound you'll find this side of Rwanda. 3" deep, 6" wide, and 10" long, seems unimaginable, I know, but I've seen it, it's real...real bad. The thing got infected and now she's back in the hospital hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines that go Bing! For about a week. Without her at home I find myself drinking too much beer and watching Star Trek The Next Generation.
I have ridden my bike a couple times, old stomping grounds rides at Noanet Woodlands in Dover and Wrentham State Forest. It's fun to go back to these places where I used to be a ninety pound weakling (more like 190lb.fat ass) getting sand kicked in my face and now I've got my Charles Atlas program going and I get to whup-up on these trails that used to kick my ass.

I was also trying out some new tires: Kenda Karma 29" 2.2's.Made the Rig feel like a monster truck, in a good way. These tires were supposed to be my new race tires but thanks to BTI mis-listing them as 500 gram tires (too good to be true) when the actual weight is just shy of 800 grams I now have some fun non-race tires. Man I wish they were lighter! These guys kick ass, what a great tire, so frickin' moto. I was ripping around Dover inbetween hospital visits, then I made a foray into Hale reservation where it looked like the camp couselors over there had just finished celebrating the last day of camp. I came upon a little beach and a little cooler upon that beach, what was in the cooler? Beer, cold Bud cans. Not exactly my cup of tea but this was the beverage with which my high school painting crew was rewarded after a hot day of attacking suburban homes with paint brushes like marauding Mongol hordes. So like a trained lab rat I scooped one out of the melting ice, looked around to see if anyone was looking and cracked it, took a few good swigs, and then I heard a truck coming down the road to the beach. I dropped the can in a pile with the rest of the empties, 'cross mounted my bike and hightailed just as any high school kid drinking under a bridge on a friday afternoon would do when busted. It was a silly thing to do but that was a damn fine tasting beer.

Today I shot down to Wrentham to visit Gramma and do what is literally the "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go" ride. The stuff down in those parts was primarily cut by Motocross bikes not hikers so they have this thing called "flow". Ya sure you got to give trail to a few armor-clad yahoos and suck on some two stroke fumes but it's the wild, wild south east and what you get in return far outweighs the drawbacks and at the end of the ride you get to jump in Lake Archer.
Oh, and while I'm all over the place and nowhere in particular here's a shot of me at the Shenandoah 100 from last year, I'm cramping massively and somehow this photgrapher caught the moment.
His stuff is really good, check it out, his name's Joe Foley. Far superior to your average "hey kid, here's a picture of you head on with your race number clearly visible doing nothing at all exciting" event photographer.
Great Glen report...forthcoming...I...promise.

Wilderness 101

This is truly absurd, I’m sitting at the base of Mt.Washington, it’s 5:36 in the morning, and I’m at a 24 hour race on a 4 Man Pro team, more about that in next week’s post, first things first. Last Friday at 7AM I met Andy Sanidas, Jeff Whittingham, and Harry Precourt at Seven Cycles in Watertown Mass, we were to caravan behind Skip Brown and the Seven van down to Coburn, PA. Skip’s driving pace soon proved too much for the Precourt van and we were on our own. Of course we reconnected as we made the requisite stop at Wegman’s where Lloyd Graves refrained from purchasing another Three Day Ham and Cheese sub (takes three days to eat it, get it?).

We arrived in Coburn in short time, pulled into the small town park which for one day a year transforms into a bustling festival of offroad cycling. After setting up camp we hopped on our bikes for a little preride, at least a preride of the last five miles or so back and forth, it’s actually really technical this thing they call “The Fisherman’s Path” and it happens after mile 95.
The weekend prior I had damaged my ITB’s at Bradbury Mt. with all that silly running business, they still hadn’t let go even after a professional (if very cheesy and weird) massage. I even had Buck Keich work on me at the event, he definitely helped me but I was still pretty screwed. You don’t want to show up to a 100 miler without your legs. So after dinner I went to bed and hoped for the best.


Wake up time was 5Am, I gagged down a couple rice and egg burritos and a banana knowing full well it would back up on me early in the race but potentially serve me well later on. I’d done this race the year before so I knew the start was going to be tough for the single speeds, 20 miles of dirt and paved roads which don’t roll quite enough for you to stay in contact. I wasn’t feeling good but kept waiting to feel better, staying within sight of the front group for the most part, then the yo-yo started to happen, I had to fight back on the uphills but my legs weren’t psyched about it and eventually I lost it, elastics were snapping left and right, suitcases of courage were busting open, their contents spewing all over the luggage carousel.
My recollection was that the race didn’t bite until after mile 60, I was mistaken, there was plenty of serious badness before mile 60, including what I call unofficially “The you’ve got to be f-n kidding me climb”. This wall that kicks up just after you pass through a campground, incredibly brutal. I’d decided to roll with a 32 X 18, a so called “two to one ratio”, stiffer than last year and much to stiff for my uncooperative lower appendages to handle. I kept waiting to feel better…and waiting, instead of feeling better I got worse, all the while holding out for one of my late race surges.
The way the 101 works is you do all your climbing primarily on dirt and fire roads then you traverse and descend on technical single track, the latter part was the only time I was having any fun. I pretty much walked the climb after mile 60, there I ran into Harry Precourt, this was his first 100 and he was rocking out. I was walking, hardly able to bend my knees, tripping over roots, contemplating for the first time dropping out due to something besides a massive mechanical or a broken bone, I had never felt so low on the bike. I told Harry I was going to go back to aid station three and drop out, he said something inspirational to me, whatever it was I kept moving forward, got back on the bike, struggled up the next little climb and entered the singletrack reinvigorated . Somehow I found the energy to rail through the fun, pointy, rocky stuff at top speed, although all the while I was going “I hope I flat, I hope flat, I hope I flat…if only so I can sit down in the shade for ten minutes”. Not a sign that I’m feeling very competitive. I didn’t flat even as I rattled down what seemed to be a two mile long stone wall, swearing and letting out crazy guttural sounds the whole way.

Jeff scoops his precious pasta salad off the Wegeman's parking lot

When I pulled into aid station four at mile sixty whatever, I saw Greg Montello and Jeff Whittingham there, I wasn’t sure why. I guess Greg had been up in the front, duking it out all day then flatted and lost impetus and Jeff meanwhile had cracked his seatpost off at the collar while sitting in the top ten. Greg was ready to call it a day but thankfully he decided to baby sit me the rest of the way back to the finish. Just as we left Aid 4 and headed up this horrible, choppy, enormous climb, Greg says “OK, no attacking each other”. I was right there with him as I completely seized up and had to hop off my bike and walk/stagger up the hill. I knew the climb was too long to walk, so I’d alternate walking with taking a few labored, painful pedal strokes. Greg was now totally out of sight but as I reached the crest of the hill I hear him yelling for me to get on my bike.
By the time we began to descend Deejay Birtch and a non-communicative geared guy on a Cannondale had caught on. Sadly I got dropped on a 2% grade leading up to some of the second to last section of singletrack. As the trail got twistier I began to gap back up, passing the quiet man with Greg and Deejay in sight, then I almost blew a trail marker, doubled back and saw only Greg ahead of me. When I finally caught up I asked if Deejay had passed him, he said no, at this point I was pretty sure Deejay had gone off course. I never did get to talk to him after the event but I can’t see how else I would have gone past him without noticing.
Just the same as last year we came upon Jonathan “Gotchaweedah?” who had perhaps stopped for a few too many “safety breaks”, he was in space. Again I was recharged by the singletrack of the Poe Trail, crashing down it with wreckless abandon, going to my crazy place, head bobbing back and forth, tongue out, talking all kinds of weirdness. When I got to the end and spun down to Aid 5, I had to wait a while before Greg showed up. It was funny to watch him have a meltdown like four year old when they told him they didn’t have any Coke just as I had moments before. You NEED Coke at mile 88 of a 100 miler, NEED. As we rolled out Greg told me that he would have killed me if I had ditched him, there was no way I was going to ditch the guy after he had sat and waited for my sorry ass so many times since Aid 4, no way, even if he had flatted I would have sat at Aid 5 drinking not-coke for ten minutes. Shortly after we got cranking on the first section of relentless, dead flat rail trail Trish Stevenson caught on, she was hot on the trail of Betsy Shogren. She was content to get pulled by the slow-motion single speed pace line.

After an eternity we reached the final climb, I stayed as close to Greg as possible, oh Jonathan had actually passed me at the Aid station so he was there too, we weren’t really racing anymore, but there was no point in getting beat by the last two people in sight. When we hit the final portion of rail trail we traded off, just trying to get home. As we came through the tunnel onto the pavement that was it, we cooled down to the line, rolling down the 10th Street Alley to the campground. I gave Greg a slow-motion lead out for the sprint, he was reluctant to take it so I pretty much had to come to a track stand to get him to come around, but he did and I pointed to him like Boonen to Stegmans.


After the race we rallied, staying up to the wee hours, watching almost everyone (even Harlan Price) bust out kegs stands, until the beer had run out, and we all felt like our asses were , in the words of Mike Ramponi “wet Melba toast”.