90% of the 101 is half mental. In particular in the hours leading up to the event. Folks begin arriving in town on Friday and by dinner time the atmosphere is thick with testosterone as we each look over each others bikes and cast off-hand comments about their gearing, choice of tires, grips, the food they might carry or drop forward. We all converged on AccuJoe’s place around 7 to pick up the registration packs that Strauber had gotten for us in Coburn. Joe had whipped up some pasta and ribs for all so we packed into his kitchen (me, Joe, Strabuer, Lewis, Billy, Ken, Joe’s friend Mike, Nita, 4 dogs) for dinner. We started laying it on thick pretty early. Joe had just put on a set of Kenda small block eights that were drawing lots of attention, Chipper had been wavering for days over his tire choice and we did everything we could to increase his level of confusion, Lewis was in the midst of his second gear change on the Rig.
One of the best parts of the 101 is the mental game. Over 100 miles, you want to be confident in your gear, and it doesn’t take much to shake the confidence of even the most experienced endurance rider. We are a superstitious breed, each with our own rituals, the food we eat, the drink mix we like, the tires, the gearing. And each of us tries to gain a competitive edge by convincing the other that our set up is better. I did 5 hundies last year, and 4 brevets this year, so I should have been feeling pretty good about my set-up. But over dinner, watching others pack up their food and drinks, I started feeling less certain with my plan to go as light as possible; pack only goo, pick up solid food at the aid stations, run 2 bottles and dump lots of water on my head. This was the strategy that I had converged on over the course of the races last year. Is started by packing to much, carrying food that I never ate. So my plan was to learn from my experience, but as I saw Joe packing up bags of Cliff Blocks and Billy heading home to fry bacon to take on the ride I was a little shaken.
On the way out I ran into Lewis still wracking his brain over his gear choice: 32×18 or 32×19. I’d been giving him a hard time about the low gear in the spirit of the trash talk that had been flying around when he was switching to the 18. But now, with the 18 on, I gave him the somber advice that I’d received in the past and have made my mantra: ride what you know. Every gearing on a singlespeed will be wrong for most of the course, that’s why they make derailleurs. If you’ve been training on a certain gearing, and are comfortable with it, that’s what you should ride. It’s good advice, and unassailable logic when everyone else’s insecurities are flying high. But I couldn’t help laughing to myself, as I headed home to get some sleep, at the thought that he was going to have to make at least one more gear switch before morning.
