I Didn't Race My Bike So I'm Just Gonna
Talk Crazy For A While

Most Evil thought I had on my ride Saturday evening:
"Hey kid on the Razor Scooter, tell your Mom to buy you a helmet, and while you've got her attention, tell her to stop buying you Twinkies".

Greatest act of self preservation on my ride Saturday evening:
Not yelling at the guy who cut me off with a flying right turn on red in the clapped out Chrysler Lebaron because he looked like Charlie Manson and had a large German Shepherd in the passenger seat.

I'm working on a screenplay for horror movie called "The Booth" (not to be confused with "Phone Booth" the crappy movie with Colin Farrell, where he's trapped in a...phone booth, pinned down by an extortionist sniper). It's about a bike mechanic trapped at the service counter of a busy bike shop on a sunny Saturday. He has to listen to "The Flat Story" time after time until he's ready to jam a pair of Ksyrium spokes in his ears in hopes that he will forget everything he's ever heard. Oh, you don't know The Flat Story? It goes something like this:

"OK, so we pulled this bike out of the garage, we haven't ridden it in years, we tried to pump it up but there might be something wrong with the pump...or we don't know how to use those weird French nozzles...or the wheel is defective...or...I don't know, maybe you can patch it or something or...do you think we need to replace the tire? What do you do plug it? Is is because we lost the cap that holds the air in?".

I'm at work so I can't respond like I would to a child asking me such questions,
"Your tire went flat because you are a bad person and God hates you".

And that's not really the end of the story either. If you allow them to the teller will carry on until it dwarfs the Icelandic Sagas, even though there are ten people in line behind them, it is imperative that you walk away at some point to go fix their flat.

I know that most normal people's idea of horror involves Nazi Zombies or Nazi Werewolves (which would win in a fight anyway?) but for a misanthropic bike mechanic, this is true horror. The Booth. Coming to..,well, a theater nowhere near you, this...never.

Now for the note to self portion of the post, the part where I talk about my "training" so that I can look back next season and see what I did right or wrong. Friday I recovered, or tried to. Had a tough time getting the legs back under me after Winding trails. Don't know if it was the stupid gear or the heat or a little from column A, a little from Column B. Whatever it was, it left me pretty tapped. I wasn't able to effectively train until Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday I did the Pyramids: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 minute intervals. Roughly. No way to really do these accurately while riding to work the total-non-crap-way through Weston. I did more on the way home, really going more "organic" with the intervals. "Well I know I'm going to hit that stop light or that cross street so I'll start this one a little late...or a little earlier". Seemed to work better. Been spending so much time on the Superfly SS mashing the big gears that when I'm doing proper douche bag intervals I'm doing them super-high-cadence and trying to breath hard. Hopefully the lungs will catch up with the legs sometime soon and we'll put together a couple good races when it counts.

This AM (Sunday) I did the Joe Friel hill cruise intervals up on the water tower along route 2 in Arlington. The access road, not Eastern Ave. or one of the undulating, stop sign broken pitches through the neighborhoods. I start it at the manhole cover by the merge sign in my 39 X 19, switch to the 39 X 21 when the pitch changes, switch down to the 17 across the false flat up the Park Ave., hitting Park at about 4 minutes in, then continuing up to the tower for about a five minute interval. I do them until my times start to increase, this time I got six. With a ten pound pack. I pack light these days but I've developed a habit of dumping change from my huge change collection into my pack in case the service registers run out of it during a busy day at IBC. In The Booth no one can hear you scream...because the sound will be drowned out by the wailing of children and the incessant ringing of bike bells.

This post was brought to you in part (the fuzzy part) by Speakeasy Ales & Lagers.

Change is Good. And Heavy.

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.

Shenandoah Mt. 100

Things started off well enough with me holding up the departure of the Seven Van (which was transporting more I.F. riders than Seven riders as usual, thanks Skip!) I heard “meet at eight” not “leave at eight”. Enroute we picked up fast guy Rich LaBombard in Connecticut at a park and ride near a Hooters and began the eleven hour journey to Harrisonburgh, VA. We all knew we were heading into a tropical storm, which had been raging up the coast for a few days and Andy kept us up to date, periodically bringing up the live weather map on his high tech PDA type thingy. What we saw was a whole lot of green, and blue swirling around right where we were headed, not good. As we got closer to our destination the facts, on the ground weren’t looking too good either. After making the requisite stop at Wegman’s (a mega-supermarket where you can purchase anything from a bag of chips to a Hummer) we arrived in Harrisonburgh to sheets windswept rain and less than balmy temperatures. First stop was Luigi’s a pizza joint staffed with hip young kids with great beer on tap and totally kick-ass food, I highly recommend it if you’re in the area.

A short while later as Skip backed the van into our camping spot there was a huge clunking crashing sound on the roof…where our bikes were. We jumped out into the deluge to investigate and found that a small yet tenacious branch had coiled itself around Andy’s bike, ripping it, and the fork mount free from the rack and amazingly doing no damage whatsoever to anything but the mount. A real highpoint of the trip was setting up camp in the dark as a steady, cold rain fell, permiating everything until I was sleeping in a puddle. I thought of my sleeping bag more like a scuba suit…wet yet warm, incredibly pleasant. I was mentally prepared to race under these less than ideal conditions but less than happy about it. However in the morning the skies had cleared to a matte gray and the conditions only improved.

The word in the van was that The Little Grille was the dope breakfast spot in town so we set off too find it, it took an hour of doing laps around Mennonite churches and grain silos and a call to Shenandoah Mt. Touring Mastermind Chris Scott but we did eventually find it. It was worth it (are you getting the idea hat a huge part of these races is the eating? It’s true, it is) so good I even bought the shirt.
That afternoon we did a little “shakedown ride” to stretch our stiff van legs out which really entailed a lot of walking and mashing on the single speed, I did get to see the last couple miles of the course which is always good and it seemed single speed friendly.
One of the many ways Chris Scott does right by the riders of his races is by providing beer and food both pre and post race, so we enjoyed a pasta dinner and a couple pops Saturday night down at The Stokesdale campground pavilion. When it came time for bed I could not go down, I kept thrashing about, Lloyd who’s tent was just a meter away piped up at one point “duuude, if you could stop moving for ten minutes, then I could fall asleep and you can stay up all night”. I tried to oblige him, although it didn’t help my struggle any, I maybe put together four hours by morning. Morning, morning is when the sun comes up, for me usually it’s well after that but not that day, it was dark and cold, I stumbled around without any light source trying to find my essential cycling accoutrements, I never did find my pump or my glasses and I forgot to ask someone for chamois cream, only found two CO2’s, and rolled down to the line fearing that my tire pressure had sunk too low due to static leakage. At the line I began asking around for a pump, I thought we were going off at 6:30, Skip said that he thought we were a bout to go, he was right, off they went, as I picked up my bike and hopped on trying to keep pace with Skip’s familiar wheel.
The start wasn’t too hard for a singlespeeder, just a little super high cadence spin on the road and then they dumped us almost immediately into an undulating jeep trail where I was able to keep the pod of Trek Pros in sight. This didn’t last for long as I dropped and retrieved the first of two bottles on a technical descent, I got back in the fray but had allowed a gap to open. I don’t have the total recall that my teammates Lloyd and Kerry have when it comes to names of sections of the course but the first real obstacle I remember is this never ending hike-a-bike uphill which being stuck with a 34 X 17 I was forced to portage the majority of. Luckily I got stuck behind fellow single speeder Topher who was rockin’ stereo speakers on his camelback, class act all the way. Toward the top along came Sue Haywood, super smooth, spinning in her granny; “hey guys if you rode your bikes it might go faster”, the only time I saw her get off the bike was when dudes wouldn’t get out of her way fast enough. My teammate Patrick Jones and I followed Haywood into the singletrack, we were ripping right along until I had a massive blowout, my rear tire sending off a geyser of Stan’s sealant. I pulled off started shaking my bike, confident it would seal, shot some CO2 into it still holding out hope, then went to the Hutchinson Tubeless Air sealant cartridge, spraying myself in the face with Stan’s was all I managed to accomplish. I sat there, no pump (I later found it under my thermarest) , no more CO2, and with a steady stream of riders rattling by me, all of them much too serious to stop and help which was understandable. Eventually someone stopped and threw me a CO2 and after a small eternity I was off with 50psi in my rear tire, bouncing my way down the trail hoping I wouldn’t flat again before I could get a CO2 from an aid station.
Not too far in I got word that Matt Ferrari was just a little ways up, then I caught up to Chris Larkin, both strong singlespeeders, I took this as sign that I was not riding backwards. On the next descent I caught up to Rich Lambombard and Harvey Minton as they flew down this amazing swoopy trail. I tried to tack onto them after the next aid station so I could capitalize on their gearedness and get dragged through the next section of asphalt but I couldn’t hold the insane cadence for too long as the lactic acid pooled in my legs, so I dropped back and started an all single speed paceline with Matt and Chris. Ahead of us we watched as Rich and Harvey’s crew were engulfed by a burst of exhaust from a passing truck towing a tractor, I guess sometimes it pays off to be a slow-ass single speed type guy.
Then we were back in the woods, crossing a stream, then crawling up a huge set of slimy rock steps which were perhaps left behind by an ancient race of giant hillbillies. After that Matt and I traded off riding and pushing our bikes up a long singletrack climb punctuated more often than was grammatically correct with pointy-slimy rocks. We had been warned that there were bees on course and that we’d be rerouted around them with the option of staying on course and running the gauntlet of stinging death and buzzing pain if we felt so inclined, Matt and opted for the former and escaped unscathed.

At aid station four Matt brandished a silver flask of something, “what’s that?” I asked “something to get you up the next hill” he replied, without a thought I took a belt…it was whiskey, and me and whiskey agree like Pat Buchanan and Michael Moore. It turned to be something that would haunt me throughout the twenty mile climb to aid station five, every time I burped up that sweet , malty, grossness.
I tried to tack onto a group of geared guys including Patrick Jones but again got dropped on the open expanses of smooth Virginia pavement. I opened up a gap on Matt who was putting in a ferocious performance considering he was coming off the Utah 100 just a week prior, I caught a couple more riders, on the lower slopes then, as the gradient increased I got Patrick back in sight and began to reel him and another guy in. Then I saw something that made me think that I was beginning to hallucinate, Skip Brown sitting on the side of the trail, I asked him if he needed anything and he told me he was just done, he didn’t know why, just done. He told me Dan Jansen was the only single speed ahead, somehow I didn’t believe it, I hadn’t seen Tim Dougherty or Mark Elsasser or any of the other one geared folks that are normally ahead of me, I assumed they were out in from somewhere. I ground up the climb, catching up to Patrick as we came into aid station five where I swilled some coke, had a quarter of a PB & J, and took off, leaving a bunch of riders still hanging out.
I’d heard that the climb was far from over at five, but when the terrain began sloping downwards I kidded myself that it was going to keep doing so…wrong, that’s where the rollers started, coming at me like crazed Jeff Gillooly’s, whacking me in the knees repeatedly with metal batons. Here I found Harvey Minton and Rich LaBombard and a few other riders. As I was death-gripping my bars on the INSANE decent off of Shenandoah Mountain I came across Andy Sanidas who I hadn’t seen all day, he’d been up front mixing things up with the big guys. I decided to take the whole “second place single speed” thing seriously and copped a CO2 off Andy to insure that I’d make it to the finish. I was sure I’d see him again before the end.
I cramped massively coming into aid station six, completely locking up, I draped myself over my bike as the awesome volunteers scrambled to get my bottles filled and my teammate Kerry threw me some endurolytes, I even raised my saddle a few millimeters to maybe use some different muscles and not seize up catastrophically again. As I left I saw Harvey bearing down on me, he caught back on as we came down off a road climb onto a flat dirt road, I was forced to stand more than usual to compensate for the cramping so I took off up the last big dirt climb, caught a couple more dudes including a big Trek rider with hoop earrings, then it was sort of a ridge thing all the way to the bottom of the last slight grade up to the top of campground. I expected to have some company here but no one showed up so I plummeted into the finish alone, banging the ceremonial gong and grabbing my pint glass.
The rest of the story involves a nap, a few beers, a trip to “the Shanty town” where Swampie was showing the young folk what “Rockstar” means, a visit to Shoneys, and a whole lot more time in the Seven van, but I’ll spare ya the details.
Thanks to Chris Scott for doing what he does, Skip Brown for the slick transport, and the rest of the crew for being kick-ass travel companions, can’t wait ‘til next year.

Root 66 Domnarski Farm Finale
Ware, MA

Gettin’ ‘Er Done (By The Skin of my Teeth)

According to my “Numbers Man” Colin Reuter, all I had to do to clinch the series lead was to finish this one inside the top ten. On paper this looked like a walk in the park, turned out to be more like a walk in Central Park…at 3AM.

Domnarski Farm is lovely place.

After a quick pre-ride of the first part of the course I was seriously second guessing my choice of a 32 X 17 gear. The first hill was wet and loamy and it seemed to go on and on. I went back to the car to swap it out, only with my current Single-ated situation this was not straight forward. I ended up having to go up two teeth in the rear to a feather-light 32 X 19 to allow the Singleator to run in the preferred “Push Up” position. All I have to say about tensioning devices is this: if you’re going to go single speed, go single speed. Using tensioning devices throws you right back into the world of technical vulnerability which geared riders live in. In that world ice cream tastes like anchovies and cat litter and Rush Limbaugh is president for life.

Aw, hell no...What up dog?

This left me with about ten minutes to the start, I rolled up to find just six guys on the line (Yeah top ten! This is gonna be a cake walk….right?). Two of the guys were Nathan Ringquist and John Foley. The two guys who were sitting second and third in the series, both of whom would leapfrog me if I didn’t finish this race. Did you just hear something in the bushes? Sounded like someone sharpening a knife…or the gnashing of teeth (going with walk in park analogy).

Up the first climb I used a policy of pre-emption, dismounting and running (while calling in an air strike on a small village in Iraq full of little terrorist babies), by the top, everyone was running and I was in third wheel when we got back on. We headed up the big climb, the legs were definitely not great, kinda got that pinging, twingy, tired feeling, but I was in contact. Mike Montalbano started instigating on his rigid single speed, causing Foley and Ringquist to pick up the pace. The other two guys in the small field dropped off a bit as we topped out and began the descent into a long jeep road section.

Alex makes crazy-good cupcakes: Mojito, Car-Bomb (not very popular in Baghdad), and Bailey's/Guiness. She sells them to fund her Ski-Orienteering adventures. Go to her Blog or the IBC Racing Blog to find out where YOU can get some!

Here’s how it unraveled.

As I was cruising down the jeep road my chain dropped, I looked down to see my Singleator dangling, limply off the back of my bike. The spring had sprung. I tried to put the chain back on and ride, no way. I felt around in my pocket “Did I pack the 18mm cone wrench I need to adjust this stupid thing?”. No sir. Here I threw a tantrum, dropped the bike and began storming around looking for something to kill or maim. Trees are stronger and much harder than I am. One of the other riders in my field had already caught a flat, I leant him a pump while I tried to collect myself. I tried to use the duct tape I had holding my spare tube to my seatpost to tether the Singleator into position. Worked until I rode through a puddle, then Ka-Chunk- Ka-Chunk! Blam! Nothing.

Another bout of histrionics and profanity spewing.

“Alright, I’m a freaking bike mechanic, I have an honorary 70% Haitian rating (long story),
I should be able to make this bike work with rocks and bits of shrubbery”. Just breath…scream…kick something…and breath. I don’t know how long I was fiddling with this mess, but I had been passed by every Expert field and then some. Finally I figured out what to do. I took one of my spare tubes (I had more than one, due to the “I just have to finish situation) and tore it in half with my teeth. The powder inside tasted vaguely of Dandelion milk and cleaning products. Wouldn’t recommend it. I then wrapped the tube around the chainstay and the Singleator shouting “Shut up and do what I tell you to do!” in my Jens Voigt German accent. I tied it off and got rolling, for a couple minutes, then Ka-Chunk! Chain off again. I stopped and re-wrapped the tube tighter this time, it would hold for the rest of the race, only skipping after I rode through large mud puddles. There were quite a few large mud puddles, but I was rolling, not walking, which was a huge plus. Every pedal stroke closer to home was God damn gift.

MacGyvering the bastard

With $250 (if I didn’t finish I would drop to third in the series) and a bunch of bragging rights on the line I was more than prepared to go for an 18 mile walk. It was going to suck, but I’d do it. Thankfully my MacGyer set up was holding and I was picking up speed. I have to say it was kind of cool way to finish off the last series race of the season (after the rage and frustration began sweating out of my body) just catching up to a few of the Expert riders one by one along the way and chatting it up. There was no sense of urgency as I passed riders, no “On your left!” or “Rider up!” B.S., just “Hi, how are ya? When you get a chance, whatever”. I passed Chris Logan, series organizer on his way to a 3rd place podium finish for the day and for the entire series. I came upon riders like Kevin Sweeney, Brian Rutter, Sean Daley, Ethan Parsons (no relation other than in our Single-Speediness), and Colin Reuter. As I ground up to Colin on the gravel climb mid way through the lap he made a joke about me taking a look at his shifting…which I took seriously, but he waved me off laughing. I tried to get him to come with me, but he wasn’t having it. He just had to finish behind Sean Daley to clinch his second place spot in the series, which he ultimately did.

Registration in the stable.

My second lap was closer to an hour than the first, of course it wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to put me in contention in my own category, but by default I would end up 4th for the day (because one guy DNFed and the other had more technicals than I did) and hold the series lead to the end. I came across the line in a skid, laying the bike down and making gun shooting motions at it. “Put that steed down!” someone yelled. Exactly. Ringquist would get the win with Foley and Montalbano filling out the big kids podium. I would, however be allowed to stand off the podium and receive a pretty decent pay out for a 4th place finish. Nice one Matt Domnarski!

James Harmon and Rob Stine, one, two in the Single Speed series. These are some bad dudes, hopefully they'll race the open class next year

I just have to say thanks to Jill and Chris Logan and everybody else who put this series together. It’s been a great year, with a whole lot of killer racing at beautiful venues. I was proud to wear the Maillot Jaune/Orange (“Orange” that’s French for…”Orange”) Leader’s jersey for most of the season and definitely proud to finish off the series in the overall lead in the Pro category. Thanks also to all the guys I raced against, there’s some real tough competition in this series and some truly gifted riders. Hopefully with the new Mountain Bike Categories we’ll see the Pro/Semi-Pro, soon to be what? Pro/1 category? Fill out with some of the top dudes from the Expert fields, I look forward to seeing some new faces on the start line next year.

Pro Series Overall podium. Jet Jaguar/ Jack Nicholson smile in full effect

Acts of Mental Alertness Awesomeness.

Wait, but that’s not all! We (Alex, Colin, Linnea, and I) stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home. That’s it…Bye!

Kidding. So, I order an Egg & Cheese and an Ice coffee “Extra dark, seriously, REALLY dark”, because if you don’t order it that way, it’s got so much cream in it, it’s as white as my arm above my jersey line. I get in the car, Colin says “Where’s your coffee?”. “On the roof”. “I would never leave my frickin’ coffee on the roof of the car and drive away, no way”. Then I start to back out…”Alex isn’t in the car!”. Well shit, at least she wasn’t behind the car . A moment later Alex walks out the door of the Dunkin’ Donuts “Did you order an Egg & Cheese?”. “Ah …yup”. So glad I didn’t forget Alex…who was holding my Egg & Cheese.

The kids load up the Family Truckster for the last time this Mountain Bike season...snif!

During the ride home Colin tries to convince me to do the Amesbury ‘Cross race the next day, despite my claims of retirement from that silly-horrible sport. Then he jokes about how I should do the EFTA Grillz Mountain Bike race, the finale of that series in Maine.

That’s ridiculous! That’s crazy! So crazy that it just might fall under the realm of “Utter-Stupidity”. That’s where I do my best work.

To be continued…

Turn off, Tune out, Drop out
Coupy Canadia Cup Thingy Part Dos

So we met up with the big kids up in Tremblant: Freye, Snyder, Ringquist, and Burns. The place was more pimped out than P Diddy's house. Check out the high-definition T.V. in the bathroom in the above photo. Puffy Daddy's house probably has far less gargantuan mosquitoes in it. Also note the uber-pro style with the tire-swapping the night before the race. Freye-Guy rolls with a portable Husky compressor for this express purpose. The guy riding the bike in the lower right photo...we followed him to the race. Oddly we wound up heading in the exact opposite direction of the venue.

We got to the mountain, it got hectic, barely had time to get my number plate, find the feedzone, and get to the line. No warm up...that's OK, I was coming off a rest week just like I was before the Fat Tire Classic. That went well, so to would this, right? The Fat Tire Classic didn't start at all like this, 80 dudes flying toward an uphill holeshot looking like a knobelly tired version of the Tour De France peloton, my "And the rest of the field" last row call up not ideal. The effective hole shot was an artificial bottleneck at the the end of a bridge. Guys around me putting their feet down as I did a track stand while waiting in line. One dude tried to muscle past me, I was not having it, Parlez-Vous "Are you fucking kidding me?". After that it was up a steep, loose, sun-baked gravel road to the actual hole shot. With a field this big and aggro, apparently an auxiliary hole shot is required. It was supposed to be 70° out, it felt like 70° Celsius on that exposed climb.

I hadn't pre-ridden, so it took me a lap to find that the course went up, across, up a little more, down. The traverse was flat and I got dropped in my 34 X 20. It was technical in spots, super-fun off-camber slippery rocks and neat little features, but the decent...yikes! Scariest thing I've ever really done on a bike, might have had something to with my head and body not being in the game at all. I was riding badly in every way. The downhill, batton bridges (steep wooden slides, intersected with small pieces of wood, and slimy too) were terrifying to me. The downhill berms, so steep and alien to my flatland mind, I was out of my element. Watching the lead Junior Expert come into one of these bizarre things like an old AMA dirt-track motorcycle racer, right foot out-riggering to the inside as the bike was turned 90° into the turn on the outside - sliding at an insane speed. I was flummoxed, baffled, bufoosed (I made up that last word), never seen some bicycle-ninja shit like that before.

Not long into the race I was pretty sure I was beating two dudes, I could not get going, I had no fire. After most of the Juniors passed me, Canadian superstar Emily Batty caught me. She had powered up to me on the slightly downhill bike path section at the bottom of the mountain. I found that I could climb with her though, staying about ten feet to her left on the fire road out of her way, watching as she climbed like a machine, so efficient, all business, head down, elbows out, upper body aerodynamic and static as her tree trunk legs ticked over the perfect gear. The fans went nuts as she went past, "Go Emi-leeeeee!". Once in a while I got a secondary shout of "Go Sing-gul Speed-dur - yew are duh man!" (Quebecois accent). But when we hit the traverse - BLAM! She put it in the big ring and was gone.

I did see her again as she was stopped dealing with some chainsuck issues, but once she worked that out she flew past me a second time and that was it. She went on to win in convincing fashion. After seeing her badness in person, the gloveless hands, the determination and concentration...I am now Emily Batty fan #1.

I made a deal with myself, either I was going to ride for two hours or until I got lapped. I got lapped slightly before two hours. The second place rider coming up on me in a bad spot (pay attention here because it may come into play during my post on the Coyote Hill race), I was out of my race, way off the pace, I didn't want to slow this hard-charging bad-mammer-jammer down for one nanosecond, I veered off on an alternative line (alternative to safe or sane) and jammed my wheel in-between a log and the edge of the trail. My bike stayed upright as I took a dive off the side, running it off down a steep embankment. I scrambled back up, got on my bike and decided to just get down the mountain alive and live to fight another day...which would be the very next day, at Coyote Hill. More on that tomorrow perhaps, but I'm not making any promises.

P.S. - IBC MTB Jedi-Guy Kevin Sweeney has started a blog, it is very good, he is smart and funny, go check it out.

Pee. Pee. S. - I got into the Vermont 50, the race I think about more than any other single race. Sweet nightmares for me from now until September.

I have no eye dear. Guy cramping at line. Linnea going up the awesome cobbled, Spring Classic like climb through the faux European village at the base of Tremblant. Rare siting of the mythological beast called "The Ben Moody". Guy wearing a shirt reading
"Pain is temporary - Quitting is forever". I beg to differ.
Pain can linger and linger on some more, quitting is over as soon as you do it.
It transforms the pain first to mild discomfort then not-pain.

For those of you who haven't been following along at home. This was the story of me, on my single speed, racing a UCI Cat 1 event against real Pros at a pretty major event. In summary it did not go well. But it was fun...in a way. A sick, sick way.

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.

The Angry Fiddler Crab of Trapped Wind

So the other day, in an effort to get my pedaling like a fiddler crab issues worked out, I went to see Sara Bresnick-Zocchi at Pedal Power Coaching. But there's more to it than that. I had sent an email to Bill Peterson of We Do Feet in an act of desperation, hoping he could steer me toward someone who could do something like he does. What he does is bicycle fit from the feet up, including custom crazy foot-beds and orthotics. The only time I have truly felt great on the bike was after he got me sorted before the '08 season. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for him, he has stopped his practice of coming up to a lovely mini-mall in Rhode Island to do fittings a few times a year. He is now in Tucson full time. There was no way I could schedule an appointment during my 36 hour visit to Tucson in February for SSUSA/AZ, which was too bad.

Bill got back to me with the quickness, telling me that he had just trained someone in my area — Sara Bresnick-Zocchi, A.K.A. "SBZ" to do the things he does. Thing is, she has mad skills beyond that already with her PT training, so she is just the person to deal with me — "The Human Pretzel."



Since I last saw Bill, things have gotten all high tech and shit. SBZ had these crazy foot scanners, like something out of Star Trek. My new orthotics are going to be sick! We did have some issues getting my "go to" bike, the Superfly XX into the trainer. I have taken to running man-size tires — Bontrager Jones Xr 2.25's. They don't fit in a trainer apparently, who knew? BUT, happily enough, I now run the kooky Sram XX which means I can throw a road wheel with a Sram Force cassette on it on my bike and it will...

kind of work.

At least it worked well enough for our purposes.

My orthotics are on their way and in the meantime I am doing some muscle energy exercises SBZ told me to do. I am feeling better already.



In other news. I am heading out for a Single Speed ride tomorrow. That's right. Big day...big day. The plan is to do a couple or so hour ride with Randy Jacobs out to a couple hour ride with MKR and Cologne Rooter and company (and then drink BEER). The ride will be ridden by folks predominantly on single speeds, I couldn't be the odd man out, I had to get my SS back up and running. This was no mean feat. I was going to do a whole "how to set up bastard-bitch near-impossible to mount tubeless tires" piece but I failed. I couldn't mount the damn tires. In the above photo there I'm demonstrating how you suds up the sidewall and put a tube in and then remove it, leaving one bead of the tire still hooked. But no dice. The WTB Weirwolf that was on my Ferrous has been sitting flat on the basement floor all winter, getting too accustomed to the idea that it's not a nice, round tire.

So I gave up and put a tube in.
I will flat tomorrow and get dropped and left alone to die in the wilderness of Burlington Massachusetts. My only hope of survival will be to drag myself over to the mall so I can get a strawberry milkshake and a cheeseburger at Johnny Rocket's.

If I do post at all Friday, it's gonna be late, that's all I'm sayin'.



I won't bore you with the fascianting story of how the Superfly SS ("Precious Thing") and The Superfly XX were sharing a rear wheel. Wow, that's a good story, I think it was inspired by one of The Canterbury Tales...fuckin'.

You like that? How I make a nerdy reference and then get self conscious about it so I temper it by acting dumb and saying "...fuckin'."

Suffice it to say, I will be racing the Superfly XX on an old Bontrager Race Lite instead of on a lighter, better Race X Lite so my single speed can live again. Never mind the fact that the Ferrous ("Dunderchee") is now missing a front wheel due to this whole re-shuffling...don't get me staahted. Anyone know of a wheel manufacturer with really bad judgment when it comes to sponsoring riders?



And I know you wanted to see SBZ's assistant, Coconut without my inept, Rathergood.com-style photo-shopping embellishments. Is she really less scary? OK, maybe she no longer wants to eat your face while you're sleeping but she still looks like she's being incredibly judgmental. What Coco? What is it? What did I do now? Stop looking at me like that! I...I can't take it, AAAH!




And I leave you with the Mighty Boosh and Howard as "The angry crab of trapped wind."

No Further Questions!

Oh God, I Shouldn't Have Eaten All That Sushi

That's what I was saying to myself half way through the Orchard Assault race. I had gone out to dinner the night before the race, my dish was small, my buddy Greg's dish was huge, I wound up eating my dish and half of his. I did not go home hungry. Of course that didn't stop me from eating the two trays of killer Sushi Miriam brought home from her dinner. It's Sushi...you can't not eat it. It's the law. I went to bed sickly full, but so happy.

As I watched Ringquist float up that hill like a ghost, like a Ninja, like the ghost of a Ninja, I felt all that Sushi weighing me down, a big anchor made of rice. A delicious anchor. The climbing at that race was no joke. They said it was something like 600 feet per 3 mile lap. We did six laps, that adds up quick. It rivals some ski area races like Mt. Snow or Windham. It felt like it. Being the dumb ass that I am, I ran a 52"ish gear . A 34 X 19, not the 32 X 22 that I've run at Windham and Mt. Snow. Considering that I'm stoked I was able to ride all but a couple small sections.

I'd love to stay and chat at you but I have an appointment with my pillow. I am about to lose my freakin' mind.

For example, the following is something I may or may not have said aloud today at work:

Crazy lady (who had been tormenting me for over an hour about saddles and blinky lights. She even told me "The Flat Story" ) - "So is there some way I can give this old saddle to some poor children or something?"
Me - "Only if you hate poor children and want to torture them"

And this is something I may or may not have said to a Mercedes AMG driver who almost killed me on my commute home:

"Hey, you know what's better than having a hopped up Mercedes?
Having a functioning penis".

I'll be nicer tomorrow. I swear.

Oh wait, I should probably tell you something about the above photo, or maybe my new thing will be posting a photo which appears to be entirely unrelated to the text, then explaining myself the next day...while posting another non sequitur of a photo. I shaved my head (For Battle!) before the Orchard Assaulting race. I was glad, I felt so much cooler on that muggy day, although the weight loss achieved by the removal of all that hair did not offset the mountain of undigested raw fish churning in my belly.

Also, notice the weird blur in the center of the lens in the last photo in the sequence. That would be the massive divot caused by me knocking the camera off the shelf during the vacuuming up process. So sad that The Helmet Hero's waterproof housing, like Elvis, met its demise in a bathroom incident. The camera itself is fine.

Next Year...More Beer

Right now I have a very different feeling about The Ice Weasels than I did at this time last year. Last year I was shattered, running a fever, lying in bed for three days, talking about how "there might not be a next year." This year I'm sitting here taking notes as to how to improve NEXT YEAR'S race. Things that jump right out are whoops and the addition of a second berm mirroring the existing one. Course length has to be added, lap times have to be longer. We're thinking we should have gates between the parking lot and the Start/Finish to make it less confusing for folks to navigate the labyrinth of course tape.

Medical. We will have a better plan for medical next year. We had a good test of our flawed "system" when a Hup rider dislocated his finger. "I can either print you directions to the hospital or call an ambulance." "Hmm, I don't think I need an ambulance." Luckily he turned out alright and even came back after they popped his finger back in. When Leah Papas-Barnes went down in the women's race, I had to do the old "Is there a doctor in the house?" And then, since Steve and I were being so goofy on the mic, had to reiterate, "no seriously, anyone with EMT training please report to the PA area."

And of course...MORE BEER. What the hell? I dropped out of the single speed race with a flat at 12:30, went to grab my first beer of the day and — nothing! No beer left. Maybe we shouldn't have tapped the two kegs at 10AM. Wait a second, that's crazy talk. The only reasonable solution is procuring additional kegs from Harpoon.

Yes I dropped out of the single speed race with a flat (while running a 2.25 tubeless tire). On a course with nothing that could possibly cause a flat. I will explain, but not today. I owe the 29er Crew blog a post or two and I plan on posting my amazingly awesome IWC race report over there, perhaps tomorrow.

We are going to have to get our acts together, the write up in Cyclocross Magazine is sure to drive even more people our way in 2010. Maybe we'll have to build that "3 story fly-over like they have in a UCI C1 race." It would open up the course quite a bit and make those lap times longer.

And no, I did not drink a six pack of Chelada during the 45 minute single speed race. I am still open to suggestions on a Chelada Challenge. Something bike-related, something where I won't definitely be arrested or definitely die.

Since I was busy running around like an idiot (what other way do I ever run around?) I didn't take any photos really, but other people did, check these out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/pdebitetto/IceWeasels#
http://picasaweb.google.com/joshuagarlich/IceWeaselsCometh#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlscott3/sets/72157622987478690/

This is special: Cosmo "Cyclocosm" Catalano's geared to SS conversion in a matter of minutes before the SS race:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/exit17/sets/72157622874305861/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/exit17/sets/72157622999017826/

A video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvF7DWhUeHs

Double Hop:
http://picasaweb.google.com/DoubleHopped/IceWeasels#slideshow/5414509494971989538

Of course results are up on Crossresults.

Some bloggage:
Chip
Alex
Chris P.
Steve , who has a graph that proves, with science, that The IWC was superior to the NoHo Verge races. Maybe next year we'll compete with day one of NoHo...we're coming for you Adam!

I haven't scoured the inner-net looking for write ups, so link 'em in the comments section if you find any.

Oh yes, this is important, LOST AND FOUND.

I've got quite a few items at the house in Somerville.

• Corner Cycle windbreaker
• IF warm up jacket
• GORE jacket
• Craft wind pants
• Millwork One warm up jacket

Leave a comment with your email spelled out and we'll work it out.

The Look Back

Last week I talked a little bit about looking forward; well this time of year is also a time to look back. Sometimes when I sit here going, "what in the hell am I going to write about today?" I forget that I was racing bikes for several years, having all sorts of wacky adventures pre-Big Bikes-blog. Somewhere in the pile of files I grabbed off my old powerbook (just before it booted up for the last time) is a document called, lamely enough, "My Cyclo-Biography." "Cyclo" instead of "auto." Get it? I am very witty. That document is a train-wreck of a story, piecing together my first few years of racing. In the deeper, darker, colder days of winter I will try to finish it and polish it up for yuz.

This is one I've pulled from the archives, my 2006 Sea Otter Classic SS race report.

First a blurb from a post-race email thread:

My favorite exchange of the race occurred during a downhill section of trail which was completely rain rutted and treacherous, the guy in front of me dropped his front wheel into a rut
then made the mistake of trying to get out of it, the result was an amazing vault over the handlebars. He managed to catch back up to me and apologize for crashing in front of me.
I told him "the thing to remember when riding ruts is if you should happen to
drop into one, just ride it out, don't fight it...y'know if you make a bad decision just stick with it, hey it works for our president right?" He replied "ya, I'm a registered republican."
I didn't have a wise-ass response so I just dropped him like a wet baby and never saw him again.



And...The race report. I edited the punctuation, but otherwise left it as it was.

Thom P.'s 2006 Sea Otter Classic

Single Speed Pro/Expert Race Report

4.9.06

When I picked up my buddy Jeff ( I.F. Grassroots newbie) at Oakland airport Friday afternoon, he mentioned something about a pleasant forecast for the weekend of Sea Otter. I stared off into the distance through the car window (while a pronounced tick developed in my left eye) and muttered something like " it rains, it always rains...they lie."

I'm a broken man, I came to Marin County last December to avoid another New England winter and we've had four months of east coast March-weather, complete with snow, floods, and mudslides. Sure enough it poured all the way down to Santa Cruz as we wove our way through prime slide territory to our borrowed beach house abode.

Saturday was a beautiful day, a beautiful day to watch a bunch of severely chagrined pros churn their way through a quagmire of stinking, tepid mud during the short track event. All I could was imagine what much of the cross-country course must look like. Preliminary reports did, in fact call the course a "muddy hell-hole."

Despite some flip-flopping on the subject of tire choice I stuck it out with my Hutchinson Pythons, perhaps not the best dedicated mud tire (cough! understatement) but yet bafflingly good in any conditions and they sure as hell don't pack up.

By the time Sunday's race rolled around the weather was not looking quite so clement the only reminder of the previous day's sunniness was the bright red knit hat line on my forehead and the feeling that I'd rubbed warm up balm on my neck.

It wasn't exactly the perfect storm but it was that kind of "arm warmers or not?" sort of temperature bordering on "should I pack my copy of 'Don't Die on The Mountain" in my camel back?"

Up until this point the only purely Single Speed event I had participated in was SSWC 2005 in State College which began with a Lemans start which figure eighted on itself then headed straight up a hill. At Sea Otter we started on The Laguna Seca RaceWay track, about seventy of us, in a pack, spinning our legs like mad, looking like a flock of hummingbirds in fast forward. Terrifying.

Travis Brown sat at the front of the group, riding at what seemed to me like an oddly reserved pace, then something happened...apparently someone attacked, flipping Travis' "Kill 'Em All switch," and he rode off into the mudset leaving the collateral damage to race for second place. I wasn't even in that race, what I was in was a world of gastrointestinal distress, bouncing down the trail like a miniature Hindenberg, periodically throwing up in my mouth a little bit, my belly distended like a two week old corpse floating in The Congo river.

The course was a grueling mix of slippery climbs, run-ups, and deceptively deep and sticky mud bogs which called out to me "Hey you, ride over me, you can do it tough guy, come on, just lean back and pull up, I promise I won't grab your front wheel and hurl you face first into the rancid muck like last lap, I've been in therapy, that's all behind me baby, give me one more chance..." Wham! Lights out.

Road course my Assos.

For the past month I'd been geeking out about the course pretty hard, I'd pre-ridden it once and familiarized myself with it's "metrics" on motionbased.com. After much inner debate I decided to go with my training gear, a 34 X 18 not the "two to one ratio" which is so popular amongst the SS racers. I figured this race was going to be all about the climbing and at two 19 mile laps with 3200 feet of climbing per in muddy conditions it would be a de facto endurance event.

I knew it was all about he second lap yet when we went off the line I tried my darndest to remain in contact with the leaders for as long as possible.

The fact I'd been putting in the long miles and not the hard miles became apparent as I went anaerobic and immediately felt like I was going to blow chunks all over my gorgeous Citron yellow paint job. Obviously staying at the front wasn't working out for me so I opted to bide my time and reel folks in on lap two.

As I completed lap one, I was told I was maybe in 14th place, this was OK by me, all I had hoped for was a top twenty placing, I told myself all I had to do at that point was not completely explode or crash so badly that I couldn't get up...sweet.

Oh that, and beat Ron Bolds my self-appointed nemesis, which shouldn't be too hard considering the fact that he is, (and don't quote me on this, I do suffer from numeric dyslexia) 74 years old, that and he races in sandals. After rounding the raceway for the second time I began firing on all cylinders, picking off guys steadily on the singletrack climbs and mud bog sections, working my way into the top ten by the half way point.

The last section of the course was called "The Long Climb Home" and I don't know how this worked out but by the time I hit it for the second time there were literally hundreds of riders strung out along that thing. I began picking my way through the mob, keeping my eye out for other SS riders, as I passed one geared rider he said "Hey, there's a single speeder just up there."
I replied "I think I'm in the top ten, I'm happy, whatever." He wasn't having it "Be happy when you're done, go get that guy!"

I acquiesced, stood up on the pedals, stomped on them, cramped in both calves, and promptly sat back down. I finally gapped up to the SSer, sort of hid out on his wheel for a bit, catching by breath, then hopped on the wheel of a passing geared rider on the next false flat. I thought that would be it for him but when I looked over my shoulder he was right there, he was on me like a grizzly bear on a man in a meat suit. I hit each climb as hard as I could but he kept closing it down, I made a move before the last section of singletrack, cutting off a geared rider, putting him between us, hoping that he would slow this madman down long enough for me to make my get away. Wrong, he was obviously a superior technical rider because he had come around the other rider and was right on my wheel through the tough stuff. I don't know what happened but I ended up with a small gap as I hit the pavement of the raceway, a few seconds later the dude comes whizzing by me drafting off a hard charging geared rider, I jump on as well and we round that last corner going thirty plus miles per hour at approximately five billion RPMs. The other SSer broke left a bit early, as he hit the wind he slowed way down, I moved onto the geared guy's wheel for a second, SS tried to come back in but clipped his front wheel on my foot, it was hectic as hell, I broke right , head down, blind from the mud in my eyes, legs flailing like mad, I even threw my bike as I hit the line first. When I looked up I saw, to my horror that there was a huge group of people congregated at the line, I grabbed two handfuls of brake, my right lever going straight to the bar, my front brake activating enough to put me into a nose-skid, coming to rest between two spectators, who caught me before I fell over.

The other Single Speeder and I tried to express how awesome we each thought the finish was through a series of unintelligible gasps, grunts, handshakes, and even hugs. He introduced himself as Dejay Birtch. honestly I couldn't have been driven to the brink of a massive coronary by a nicer competitor, a class act all the way.

I ended up 7th which was way better than I'd hoped for and had a killer time doing it, except for the throwing up in my mouth part, that I could have done without.

That's Dejay Birtch right on my wheel. The kid to the right was walking his bike in the middle of the only piece of trail with anything like traction on it. I told him to move...with feeling. I look at his face now and feel bad about it, but hey, as Paul Curley says, "that's bike racing."

If you clicked on the Dejay Birtch links (like the one you just ignored) you may have noticed that his blog "Single Swizzle." Which used to be dedicated to the celebration of single speed culture and endurance racing is now a fashion, shopping, and jewelery blog. He kind of came apart after losing out in that sprint all those years ago, shaving his substantial and unruly sideburns and growing a gel-quaffed faux-hawk. But the world of single speed mountain biking's loss is the fashion world's gain, what would they do without Dejay's "Top Ten Shopping Tips for Teen Girls"? Where he gives invaluable advice like:

"The web is a fabulous way to see the world. Using your computer allows you to get all kinds of information on all kinds of things."

That point was illustrated here today. Thanks Dejay, we'll miss you.