Physics

Newton’s Third Law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I was reminded of this at 7:30 on Saturday morning when Billy, AccuJoe, Strauber, El Cacapon, the Viking, and I were all standing around at the start line in the shivering cold, waiting for the start at 8. I take almost full responsibility for getting there so early, though I hadn’t quite banked on Strauber driving 90mph to get there, which shortened the trip by at least 10 minutes. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to miss another start, and I’d gone to great lengths to make sure everyone was packed on Friday night.

I’d planned on using Saturday’s Rocktober Challenge as a long training ride ahead of the Mohican in two weeks. I was still unsure how my leg would feel, and whether or not 5 hours on the trail would tear my stitches out, so I went into the event with a pretty relaxed attitude, and no real goals other than a fun day on the bike. As such, I’d been a bit cavalier about preparation and food and sleep. It wasn’t until the racers meeting at 7:45 that I started to realize what I’d gotten myself into. Mike Kuhn stood on a picnic table and told us all about the challenging SEVENTY-MILE course he had set out for us. That’s right 7-0 miles. Somehow, though I knew it was supposed to be 100K, I kept thinking in my head that this had always been a 50 mile race, so it was like a 50 miler, with a little extra at the end. No biggie. But 20 more miles is whole ‘nother race at the end. And so it was that I started rolling at 8, with almost no idea what I was in for .

We started off with a neutral roll-out behind the moto, and then into a fire road and double track climb that strung out the field. Then the course dropped straight off the mountain, on a descent that even the most hard-core among us had to walk, which resulted in packing the field back up together for the road section on the other side. On the road I joined up with Topher, Billy, Elk, and Cruikshank in a little singlespeed peleton sitting in behind Ernesto. When the road turned up we all split up to ride at the pace our gear allowed and then regrouped quickly along the singletrack ridge-top. To call this trail rocky is a severe understatement. It was like riding along a gravel road . . . if you and your bike had been shrunk down by 50%. Even when it looked like it smoothed out, the trail was littered with baby-heads. It was relentless, there was no time to let my hands rest, get water, eat, just focus on the line ahead and keep pedaling. It’s at this point that I have to thank Harry and Jimbo for taking extra time to go over my bike and service my fork this week. After Tuesday’s debacle I was pretty nervous about heading into the rocks, but they dialed the fork in nicely and the bike felt great through this section which did wonders for my confidence. I rode the lead for much of that ridge-top with the an ever growing group filling in behind (which I think means I wasn’t riding that fast). When the trail turned off the ridge into a nice, though a bit greasy descent, I quickly felt my nerves kick in and I bobbled a bit on some otherwise easy sections. I pulled off to ease the traffic and followed in behind. A little further down, my saddle dropped and twisted and I had to pull off to fix it, which meant I lost all my gains from the opening climbs. But by the bottom I hit a long asphalt section with Strauber and he was able to pull me back up to the main singlespeed group as we closed out loop 1 and hit the pit.

I headed out on loop two with Aaron, Billy, Lewis, and Topher forming the lead SS pack. And that is where my recollection of the course starts getting foggy. It went up, and down, and up again. I recall almost none of it being flat. And almost none of it being smooth. Aaron and I would make gains on the climbs, and Topher and Billy would catch up to us when it got rocky. Lewis flatted early in the lap (which apparently initiated a series of flats) and it was down the four of us. And then it was down to 3 after Billy struggled through a serious bonk on one of the climbs. Somewhere in the midst of loop 2 the single track climbs got steeper, and wetter, and I had to start walking my bike more and more. But I finally managed to shed Topher and Aaron on the climbs and started yoyo-ing with Ryan from Sicklers. He and I ended the loop together at 1:30, which was about when I thought the race would be over. When we hit the aid pit I was greeted by Nita, Steph, Cecilia and the kids, who had come out to watch the finish according to our initial estimate of timing. Though it was great to see them, it reinforced who much I had underestimated this course.

Ryan and I headed out on loop three which started out on a miserable (in a good way) bit of marshy trail that paralleled 192 and was at times almost indiscernible from the surrounding forest. After the course turned up (much of it at a walking grade) I was able to shed Ryan for much of the third loop. The first loop had been about the same length and seemed to end so quickly that I expected the finish around every corner, but I was to be continually disappointed. The trails were great, with some really fun technical sections, but I was 15 miles further into the day than I’d expected and my spirits were starting to sag. After a long flat section Ryan (and his gears) caught me before we saw the course arrows turn up a brutal power line cut. We thought they must be kidding, but indeed, that was where we had to go. There were some grumbles, and it was everything I could do keep walking. Ryan was able to remount sooner than I was and, dejected, I let him ride away from me near the top. Thankfully, the course finished soon thereafter, because I was ready to lay down and cry.

In the end, I came in 6th overall, 1st in singlespeed at about 7.5 hours. I was as surprised as anyone else. And when I went to wash up afterwards I was double pleased to see that the stitches were all still in place. The race had taken its toll on the riders. Strauber, Lewis, AccuJoe, and the Viking all pulled out after loop two as had 1/3 of the field. Billy rolled in in 3rd place in the single speed, and Steve finished it off shortly thereafter, winning the 45 plus category.

The girls, who had put in their own endurance effort chasing Bella and Benicio around the campground for hours while waiting for us, quickly retreated to Elk Creek and we followed in close pursuit. Through the perspective of the bottom of a Big Trout Stout, we were all able to reflect on the race and agree whole-heartedly that it was a damn fun course. Maybe a bit too long, but it was our fault for not being heads up about that beforehand. The trails were really challenging, and we got a great chance to see a forest that most of us had never ridden.

Big thanks to Mike Kuhn for putting on a great show. Well supported, well marked, great volunteers. All the things I’ve come to expect from his events. While it was relatively small field, I think this is a race that needs to get a bit more attention, because, well, the name says it all . . . ROCKtober CHALLENGE!

And thanks again to Harry and Jimbo for setting my bike straight. I was pretty worried about my mental game after crashing early in the week, but the bike felt great and I was able to get my confidence back pretty quickly and spend the day having fun rather than worrying about staying upright.

Crash and Burn

There is a certain fiction about mountain bikers that we take great pride in hurting ourselves.  That we crowd around the bar comparing scars.  And while that may happen from time to time, I think that most riders I know take much more pride staying upright.  And so it is with great humility that I have to say my last two crashes have both occurred on the Tuesday night local short-track practice race course.  Sustaining a lifelong scar on a club race is a bit like loosing your virginity to your first cousin.  Its always there, you can’t take it back, and your not likely to go bragging about it.

Two weeks ago I was feeling like a rockstar on the course, trailing rather tightly behind Jean-Luc who is far and away a better bike handler than me.  We were often one and two on the course, but I usually felt like he was holding back in the twisty stuff.  And that night I was convinced that I was holding my own.  Perhaps that is a fiction, but it’s my fiction.  And as we hit one of the straighter sections I stood up to sprint onto his wheel and before I knew it I hit the soft dirt with my face.  I’d hooked a bar on a sapling and gone straight down and full speed.  It took the wind out of me, twisted by bars fully around, punctured my water bottle and I soft-pedaled the rest of the course.  Coulda happened to anyone, it sucked, but no great harm.

Last night I hoped to redeem myself, but I was foiled.  I had just put my Reba back on the IF ahead of Saturday’s Rocktober fest and it was feeling very odd after sitting for too long.  It had no rebound damping and was compressing funny, even when locked out.  My seat post has lately taken to sliding down, and I twice adjusted it on the way to the course.  And on the first roll around the course I started to realize that I’d not let enough pressure out of my tires after Monday’s spin on the road.  Before the start I adjusted the saddle, but didn’t soften the tires and I was all over the place over the first lap.  The recent rains had left the course really greasy, and the combination of my saddle and the fork meant my position was off as well, so my balance was terrible.  At the start of the third lap I was running third just barely and I slid out coming around a turn.  My shin hit the bike and I came up to see a deep gash and what I hoped wasn’t bone.  Though it looked like it should be gushing it wasn’t bleeding too badly, but, uncommonly for me, I thought that this was bad enough to head straight to the hospital and I spun quickly home.  After quickly washing the dirt out in the kitchen sink (to the shocked face of Nita) we headed to the ER where they quickly assured me that I’d made the right choice.  After a quick look, they left me to sit for 2.5 hours before finally coming to stitch me up.  7 stitches in all. Today it feels pretty good.  Though that leg is moving a little slow.  I’m hoping that the stitches will minimize the gruesome scarring so that I won’t have to explain its origins too often.

Hopefully I will feel alright by Saturday and will be able to muster the confidence to tackle RB Winter for the Rocktoberfest.  My legs could use the miles, and my psyche could use the reassurance!

Blue Curacao

Last week I left the dreary spring of State College for the Caribbean to celebrate my Dad’s 60th birthday with my family. The transit was relatively brutal: I left State College at 10, drove to NY, arrived at 2 AM, left my folks house at 5AM to drive to JFK to fly out. But the warm sea air when we stepped off the plane in Curacao was well worth the effort.

Its an odd island. Once owned by Spain, then The Netherlands, then autonomous, and now caught somewhere in a love triangle between the autonomous Curacao government, the Dutch who have stepped in to rescue it from political and infrastructural decay, and the Venezuelan government which owns and controls the majority of their oil industry. It was a popular tourist destination 40 years ago and fell into disrepair until being rescued by the Dutch recently. Now the island is abuzz with new construction on the strength of the Euro. Though the effect of this is that it is spectacular from within the confines of the several well established resorts, and an odd mixture of decaying buildings and new construction once you venture outside.

What Curacao does have (aside from plentiful seaside bars) is a World Cup race course. Rather than subject my family to my insanity I left my bikes at home, but on the last day there I rented two Ridley’s and took my brother for a spin around the course. It was hot, the kind of hot that you might encounter in, say, a potters furnace. The trail was bone dry, the underlying surface was hard (and sharp) coral rock filled in with sand and loose stone. The course wound around through some nice rolling single track with some steep power climbs along a powerline cut. Venturing off the race course took us along a 10m cliff above the beach and then wound along through a series of salt harvesting ponds that looked like the setting of a 50’s sci-fi movie. Ultimately, the heat was a bit too much (and the trails a bit too limited) and I rolled back after 2 hours.

By no means a mountain biker’s paradise, its a pretty damn nice place to sit on the beach and drink margaritas!