Bad Idea Racing

Saturday night most of the heavy hitting single speeders convened around the keg and discussed the top contenders. We figured the race was pretty open, but there were at least five to ten guys who had a shot at winning the thing. Names like Tim Dougherty (my BC Bike Race partner), Buck (SSWC05 champ), Topher, Benji, Jason "Captain" Morgan, were being thrown into the ring and then all the people we didn't know had to be considered. I realized a place in the top five was within reach so I left the beer behind early in the evening and went to sleep.

I had to get up ten minutes before the bang-a-gong wake up call at 5:00am. I forgot the fuel for my campstove, so my oatmeal and coffee were useless. I needed to be first in line for the limited supply of caffeine and bagels that would be there for the early risers. I was definitely in the top three of this most important event, and I made away with plenty of coffee and food to at least get me to aid station one. After fueling up and a couple trips to the porta-jon I made sure I got to the front of the start line so I could stay clear of the pack of well over 400 riders as we rolled into the darkness. After the start we made our way onto the open road, and I backed off the pace confident that I had made it past the mêlée of an aggressive start. I watched plenty of SS'ers roll by not knowing who they were or where they were going in such a hurry. I also saw some of the top known contenders go by, but that's how it usually goes for me.

Early on I saw plenty of mechanical DNF's. Tim Dougherty was at the side of the road messing with his Singulator. A guy on a beautiful Vicious Cycles was fiddling with his EBB, and I saw Chris Eatough walking backwards on the course looking dejected. That was odd considering when I talked to him at the BC Bike Race he said that he had never had a mechanical DNF in an endurance event. Tough break, I heard later that it was a broken rear axle or something (on a bike with Trek's new pivot around the axle???). When I reached the top of the first real descent of the day I finished off a bottle of gatorade and swapped it's position with the my full bottle. A few moments later I looked down to see that the happy bottle had ejected from its happy place, and I was left with just an empty vessel. Hmmmmm.... that's a bit of a setback so soon in the race, but I guess that just makes it more interesting.

The pre-cramps were evident early on. Even though I eventually got another bottle the time I spent riding without a beverage (and paying the price for the night before beers) had taken its toll. I could feel three different parts of my body were very disgruntled with the way they were being treated. It felt like it was only a matter of time before they formed a union and went on strike, so I backed off and gave in to their demands. I slowed down, drank loads of Gatorade, popped some electrolytes, and squeezed a few packs of mustard down my throat. When I tried to pick up the pace I could feel that my cramp threshold was greatly compromised, so I was in for a reserved 70 mile effort to the finish.

After the second aid station my body was a bit more responsive, so I did my best to maintain a decent pace. There were a lot of flat sections, and I yo-yo'ed with a bunch of geared riders from the NC area who seemed delighted to watch me struggle to keep up. I brought back another single speeder (Doug Jenne/Vicious Cycles) in that bunch, but I was hunting for more. Eventually the course lifted, and I climbed away from the group towards aid station three. When I got there I was wigged out by what I saw. It seemed as if every SS rider in the top six were at the aid station at the same time. I had always wondered what it would be like to "race" a close race, and here we were bunched up with 55 miles to go.

The "racing" feeling wouldn't last as we hit a flat road, and I watched the more endomorphic of my fellow SS'ers roll away. Any time I tried to ride with a fast spin it brought back my cramps, and my one attempt to stretch my right hamstring resulted in me screaming in pain. I went from dreams of winning to dreams of a top five finish again. All I had to do was fight the cramps and ride consistently for another 50 miles.?.?

On the next climb on the way to aid station four I was able to fight my way back up to the lead SS group. When the climbing got more technical I was forced to back off again as I knew a stumble or a fall might have me laying on the ground in a cramped up ball if I made a sudden movement to maintain my balance or just stay upright. As I pushed up the trail I watched as the stronger riders (Topher, Benji, and Jason) rode away, and on the backside of the climb Andy (on his beautiful Igleheart SS) caught me on the descent. Oh well, back to top five aspirations again. I kept hearing a jiggling noise as I rode that could be heard over my MP3 player, but my rolling evaluations failed to discover the culprit. I blamed it on a wild imagination, and left it at that.

At aid station four we were all back together again...well, except for Topher. He had gotten out first, and the rest of us had an efficient (and slow moving) peleton with a few geared riders. We could see that Topher was sitting up waiting for us, but none of us really wanted to put any effort into catching him, so he rode alone and exposed for quite awhile. When he finally joined our group we all had a good laugh at his expense and rode together till the road pitched up for the biggest climb of the day. There was one small climb at the base that put Topher and I off the back, and the following slight flat saw the others ride away from us. It was a sad day for the skinny folks, and I did what I could just to keep Topher in sight. I was sitting in fifth, and I was coming to terms with the fact that it might have to do.

Once the climb truly began things changed for me. I found that I could maintain a fairly consistent metronome-like pace without feeling any cramp symptoms in my legs. Shortly thereafter I put away Topher, and ran up the back of Benji. With two more riders away I kept at it until I saw Jason and Andy up the road. As I approached them I scanned the course profile I taped to the back of my number plate and started plotting a scheme. I did my best to pass Andy with as little apparent effort as possible and made my way up to Jason. When I got to Jason I put up a small attack hoping he would follow along. I wanted Andy to see that this was a two man race from this point on, and hopefully he wouldn't (or couldn't) react. Either way it worked, and Jason and I rode outta Andy's sight and arrived at aid station five a happy pair.

It's at this point that I should mention Jason and I have history. When I won the Cohutta 100 in 2006 he was second. The same thing happened at the Cowbell 12 hour race two months later. This year Jason was second when I won ORAMM a coupla months ago. Jason has made it very clear that one of his goals is to beat me. This was looking like it would be his chance to best me, as I was still on the verge of cramping. I knew what needed we needed to do to stay away, and I decided to share what it with Jason. Since the top SS'ers spent such a long time together our weakness's and strengths had become apparent. If Jason and I could climb to the top of the the last big descent at mile 82 as fast as possible I was certain that we could hold off Andy. He was the strongest on the descents out of the three of us, but if he never saw us we could avoid being his carrot. Then it would just be the two of us with a couple climbs to the finish.

We stayed clear of Andy to the top of the big descent, and Jason let me take the lead as we headed down. I started feeling the cramps as I tried to keep my pedals at 3 and 9 o'clock. I wasn't going to be able to descend as fast as I am used to, so I let Jason by. He was reluctant to come by as I usually can stay out front of him on the descents. We sounded like Chip and Dale out there in the woods arguing over who should go first and who was going to win.

"You first."
"No, after you."
"Certainly not, you should go first."
" You should go first since you're going to win."
" Of course it will be you who wins so you should....

I told Jason that I would hold him back, and that if he wanted to win he needed to go. I didn't want to be the reason that Andy caught him, so eventually he went off the front and on his way to the last aid station alone.

As I rolled into aid station six I saw Jason pulling out. I could have tried to chase him, but if he had anything left I would risk cramping up and DNF'ing as I was now feeling bad things in three places in my right leg and two in my left. I felt a sense of happy calm watching him pull away. Knowing that a friend of mine was going to win the Shenandoah 100 made second place feel less painful. As I rolled along as conservatively as possible I realized what had been causing all the ruckus on my bike. My bottle cage was falling off, so I pulled out the bottle, emptied it, and stowed it in my jersey pocket. Eventually the lower bolt came out, but stupid me I installed it with a disc/torx bolt and didn't have a tool to tighten it back up. The cage was swinging to and fro hitting my cranks, and I tried multiple times to tighten it with my fingers (later I remembered I had duct tape in my jersey pocket, doh). I decided it would be better to let it dangle recklessly in my spinny bits rather than lose a place trying to fix it. I rolled down the final descent through Shanty Town and into the finish with my cage hitting my ankle the whole way.

Second place out of 60 single speeders, 8:46:09 ride time, and 1 minute 17 seconds behind Jason.

26th overall

Congrats Captain Morgan. Looking at the past results I could only see three people who have done the course faster than you (Dan Jansen, Skip Brown, and Danny Brennan----1999/2000 results kinda hard to figure in). Nice work.

Also big congrats to Tommi McMillar for breaking 9:30 on a fixed gear. Unreal. I heard there were some folks on geared bikes there also, but that could have been a rumor.

Oh yeah, the top five SS'ers were all on 29'ers, but then again is there such a thing as a 26" single speed anymore?  Maybe at the Smithsonian?