This weekend was certainly a whole lot different then last weekend’s series of 3 crit’s. Team Bi-atch, minus Mike Y., headed to Ohio for the Mohican 100, 100 miles of mountain bike racn’ pleasure!! It was a long and hard weekend but in the end we all ended up doing pretty well and landed in the money. Here is the tale from my perspective if you care…..
Observation: Blogging reminds me of a Doogie Howser episode the end you know? Was Doogie the first blogger? Hhmmm…
Friday…
I headed out of DC in the early afternoon for West Virginia. I arrived in Morgantown around 4pm. Much to my surprise Gunnar and Betsy had the van pretty close to packed.
We quickly threw my stuff in, grabbed a few Blackbear burrito’s and we were off -Jackie, Betsy, Gunnar and I headed for Loudonville, Oh.(or the middle-of-nowhere, Oh), our ETA 10pmish. The trip was enjoyable, however, fairly uneventful which was nice. No one seemed too focused and no seemed to care about what we had in store for our selves the next day. Betsy was concerned about her trip after the race (she is a part time mad scientist and was giving a presentation on germs in Minnesota Monday) and she was worried about Gunnar. Gunnar has been on the losing side of a cold for over a week, which is why he chose to do the 100k race. And me, well as you know my head has been up my booty for weeks now so I am not even sure what focus feels like these days. Betsy and I chatted, Gunnar and I bickered . We arrived around 10pm with just enough time to pick up our numbers and drop our “drop bags” in the bins.
We had a beer and chatted with the promoter who was happy to see the Shogrens (and had no clue who I was) and then started setting up camp. We hit the sack around 12:30am for our 5am wake up. Plenty of sleep right? Well, around 1am all hell broke loose. My tent began to pitter-patter with a light rain…then loud thunder…then a torrential down pour. Rumor has it that there were tornado warnings in the region. Man did it come down. I stepped out around 2am for some bladder relief and there was a river flowing in front of my tent. This was going to make for a long race if this kept up. Luckily, around 2:30am things began to slow up and I found myself dosing off until 3am when the loud obnoxious reverse beeper from the Cannondale box trailer woke the whole campgrounds. Ugh, 5am came around quickly and I probably got 2 hours of sleep in total. Awesome!!!
Saturday: Race day...lets get it on
My cell phone alarm went off at 5am and boy was I ready to race 100 miles on those 2 hours of sleep. The skies were clear though, YAY!! Around 5:15 I banged on the bus to wake the Shogrens. Some coffee was brewed, food was eaten and racing was in the air.
Unfortunately the race did not start at the campgrounds but it was ending there, ugh. So we loaded the bikes and the gear we needed for the race into the van and we put all the post-race goods in my tent and off we went to the start in down town Loudonville.
7-7:30am Miles 1-6
The start was not very single speed friendly. 5-6 miles of road before hitting the woods. I spun my lil’ heart out and was able to enter the woods around 30th with a hand full of SS guys in front of me. Not bad.
We hit the woods and I would no longer be at an extreme disadvantage with my lack of gears. As I ran the first hike-a-bike I saw Gunnar stripping at the top (he can explain this impromptu strip show). I quickly found myself in the top 15 with the Trek boys leading the train. I was moving and shaking with the mover and shakers but I knew this would only last for so long because once we hit the roads or major elevation change we SS kids would have to make our way at a slower pace. This 30-mile stretch was a manicured zigzag of super fast single track though. It was fast and fun….pretty freaking sweet!!
Miles 35-to the end…a mix of dirt and paved road, single track, climbs, hike-a-bikes and a ball buster 10-15 mile railroad grade…
I lost view of the fast boys with gears just after checkpoint #1 (5-6min back I was told). I found myself with a crew of fast SS kids, which is exactly what I wanted though. We were all in the same boat and we were able to work together when needed, shell each other when racing and chat with each other during the hard times. Gunnar (he had gears) bridged up to us somewhere between checkpoint 1 and 2. He has been sick so he was doing the shorter race and seeing how chatty he was I knew he was just out for a ride not racing too much. It was nice to ride with him but he was getting a little too comfortable at checkpoint 2 so I had to leave him behind. Bye Gunnar!!! About 3 miles away a couple of us were climbing the road of the “dead animals” and at the top the arrow pointed us right. 5 or 6 us traveled for about 15 minutes and realized we had made an error. We turned around and started heading back. Another guy rolled up on us who had helped mark the course and explained to us that some one turned some arrows around. Awesome, 7-8 extra miles and 20-30 minutes of time wasted.
We were a merry band of lost single speed kids: Jaime (from Pa.) Chris “Topher”( also Pa) and another guy from Cleveland . We rode well together as SS kindred spirits when we had to, bumped elbows as competitors when it was time to and chatted while getting know each other when we wanted to. Betsy bridged up to us on the ball-buster rail grade. She pace lined with us for a while but since she had gears she quickly dropped us (go Bunny). As we began to hit more trails our new friendships were put aside and the racing started in earnest. The four of us left checkpoint 4 together. As we were leaving another SS kid arrived so it was on. Quickly it was just Jaime and I. He attacked me hard on a real dick dragger hike-a-bike. He had a solid gap but I was able to bridge after about 10 minutes, whew!! We rode hard but cooperated with each other going in to check point #5(also saw several eagles, F-ing rad). Going into the checkpoint a guy hollered 7 miles to go and there is a SS guy (Matt from Nittany Wheelworks) about 4 minutes up the trail. I was feeling good so I was up for the chase and was anticipating Jamie’s attack at any moment. Much to my surprise Jamie stopped at the check point( later we chatted and he told me that he was out of water and was in a bad way, thanks Jamie). I put my head down and chased. I caught Betsy but not Matt F (Wheelworks). Oh well, I came in about 4 minutes behind him in 4th (21st overall). I did slow up so that Betsy and I could finish together as I knew Gunnar would be at the line with a camera but no Bunny. I crossed the line and told Gunnar she was just behind me. We waited…waited…waited…there is Jamie no Betsy for 20 minutes. Turns out she missed the last turn in to the woods as did many. She still won though…
Betsy 1st women (Top30ish overall)
Gunnar 4th 100k
Me, Chris 4th SS (21st overall)
We missed you MikeY
…all in the $$$$, YAY
Full results:
We were all tired. I did give a half-hearted attempt to convince the Director to drive us to the Hoo-Ha down in Va. Since Betsy had to get to the airport I was not getting the needed support to make a convincing argument. The awards were late and the beer was cold so I quickly rested my ambitions to race twice and settled on getting a buzz (props to the few hardy souls that did do both).
Back in the tent by 12am for yet another horrible rainstorm, great. I was able to sleep through this one though.
Sunday…
We rose slowly and achy. But that was fine. We drank some coffee and licked our wounds. As we were milling around we did discover that many people did not pick up their drop bags Yippee for us, dumpster diving for gels, bars, drinks and other racer type stuff…SCORE!!
This was better then the recliner I dumpster dove for a few years back. We at Team Bi-atch try not to waste and to be frugal…and we are!!! We also helped Garth(promoter) break down the finish banners and such. We are not spoiled brat athlete’s at Team Bi-atch either we know what’s what…kind souls we are (We did take his money and drank his beer)!!We broke down our camp. Drove through Ohio, dropped off Betsy at the airport and still made it to Blackbear for the Klimas benefit. Then I soloed to DC arriving after 1am, yuck.
Shout out and props…
Gerry, Andy and Steve-O the Pittsburgh crew
Jamie, Topher, Dejay, Fuzzy and all the other SS homies
And to all that competed whether you came to win or just to finish before the cut off we all went through the same shit together just at our own ability….good job!
That’s it…
The Shogren’ s camera has the better pic’s maybe Gunnar will add a few.
Thoughts:If I didn't go off course for 30 minutes or if I had gears what could I of pulled off? ..hhhmmm!!!
Things learned: Ohio ain't that bad and
This weekend the 24 Hours of Big Bear. Still looking for lights, HELP!!….stay tuned for the next
tale….
* I am tired, hit spell check once and proofed it 0
http://www.cyclingnews.com/mtb/?id=2008/may08/mohican100_08
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