Throughout the year, I think about this stupid race (I say that with love) more than any other race. I obsess over it. It’s a 50 mile tour through the mountains of Vermont with nearly 9,000 feet of climbing. This is the fourth time I’ve done it on a Single-Speed and I haven’t used the same gear twice. Someday I’ll get it right, I swear. Gearing and tire choice is always an issue, this year we had the added complication of inclement weather,  it was going to be 50° with a 100% chance of rain, the attrition began before the race even started.

Race prep went well enough.  Good sleep two nights out (for a change) and some sweet alternative openers on Saturday afternoon. I was driving up I-89 in the Subaru, steering with my knee, eating a tasty giant chicken Quesadilla with both hands when I blew by a Statie.  Looked down at the speedometer - 87Mph, aw crap. I looked right, saw “Warner Exit 1/2 Mile”. I went all Dukes of Hazard on it, gunning it to the exit as I saw a dust cloud in the rear view from The Statie busting a U-ie in the median. I got the end of the ramp, turned left, obscured from the highway by a bunch of trees, and watched as The Statie, lights a-blazin’, went hurtling down the road beneath me. I quickly realized that there was no on-ramp at that exit, so I went for a little scenic tour of the New Hampshire back country, finishing my Quesadilla, content that I hadn’t just been nailed with a $2oo ticket.

So that got my heart rate up.

I got checked in for the race at The Ascutney Mountain Lodge, went for a spin up the road, had some dinner (part of the tradition of this thing is the big Saturday night pre-race meal), and went off to find my buddy Jeff who had a spot for me at his camp site. The folks at the camp headquarters gave me a bit of a hard time, “there’s no one by the name of Whittingham here.” “How about Cook, Glen or Tim?” “Oh ya…Tim Cook, hmm, OK.” Apparently Tim already had a rep with them (he came in past check in the night before). Mild mannered, affable Geology Professors, like crystal-meth-tweakers tend to exude that “I’m nothing but trouble” vibe. “Alright, we’ll let you go in, but you can’t park your car on site, you have to walk to the site from the lot over there.” It was far and the path was flanked by twitchy little critters with glowing eyes. Like a horror movie for children.

The plan was to have Tim’s brother and our friend Will stop by, but that was not to be. They were intercepted at the gate,  “Nope, it’s quiet hours.” The sign said 10PM-7AM, but tonight, quiet hours had begun at 7:45 it seemed. Everyone at the camp ground was there for the race, they were all going to have a few beers, then hit the sack at about 10. Shortly after this, Tim received a call from The Warden, “You need to tell your friends to leave!” This was followed by a golf cart assisted visit, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, this is a quiet campground, what’re you trying to have a party?” Glen and Will, undeterred, attempted to skirt the defenses, parking on the road and coming up a path to our site. They didn’t realize they were dealing the Chuck Norris of campground attendants. He came storming down the path with his flashlight, shouting about how he was going to call the cops. Glen, in a panic, hid the six pack of beer he was carrying in the bushes like he was a high school kid (he’s over 30), shut off his light and tried to sneak over to the site. The Warden shut off his light and tried to go Ninja as well, this drove Glen and Will back to the car. The Warden’s assistant followed them down the road in her car for good measure, just to make sure they were really leaving.

We never did find that six pack.

Sleep didn’t happen. Just as I began to drift off (at 2:30AM) the rain came, beating down on the roof of the car, making me feel like I was huddled inside a giant snare drum. I looked at my phone clock, hoping that it was time to get up anyway, no sir, still two more hours of sleep available. Available but inaccessible. We rolled up to the resort a little late to find ourselves stuck in a massive traffic jam…at 5AM in Brownsville Vermont. I ran to check in, ran to the line minutes after they had called us up. Hundreds of riders (800 people do this thing every year) lined the driveway of the resort, I slid over to the left side, getting up to the front. Some dude backed in in front of me, sort of up an embankment. The start command was given, dude in front of me immediately flips over his handlebars, face planting onto the road, auspicious start to a 50 mile race.

The 6:15 start is downhill for the first three or so miles, it is always sketchy, it’s dark, it’s fast, it’s lined with pot holes and we’re a bunch of mountain bikers who can’t ride in a pack to save our lives. This year we had a pace car to make things “safer”, only when the car veered left there was no one to usher us to the right down the course. I know the course well enough (this would be my 6th 50), so I turned, the twenty guys in front didn’t, slamming on their brakes, the couple hundred guys in back of me were confused, I was nearly trampled as  were a few others who made the turn.

The start is so fast, it’s often tough to stay in contact on the Single-Speed, this year I made the cut, reaching the top of the first major climb with the leaders, going third wheel into the woods (I tried to be courteous and let defending champ Whittingham go ahead but he chose to hit something in the tall grass and bobble, making me look like a discourteous prick). This didn’t last long, it gets steep, I had underestimated how much this stuff would slick up…and I was running low knob tires, no traction. A few dudes passed, but I was still in the top ten, separation had been made.

It was dark, darker than usual due to the cloud cover. I couldn’t see a damn thing, just slamming straight into stuff, getting knocked this way and that, by phantom obstacles. The top five or so guys were soon out of site on the ever-undulating-upwards jeep roads and I found myself going back and forth with a guy from New Jersey (John?). Eventually I would out climb him consistently enough to get a gap which stuck, from then on I was in no man’s land, a place of wind and rain, and weird, weird thoughts. I caught up with a rider in his granny gear going up Gavin’s hill, he was sitting and spinning, I was standing and lurching. He’d lurk behind me for a while, until young gun Peter Ostroski (watch out for this kid) came along, rocketing up from the 20-27 group, making up a two minute deficit on me. I used him as a rabbit, dangling off him, even climbing at his pace for a while (my Xr1s may not have been my friends in the mud, but they were rolling supah-fast on the dirt road climbs).  This caused lurking man to disappear and I knew I was likely closing on the group ahead.

Ostroski ultimately gapped me, getting out of site. Not long after that I saw him sidelined with a blown up derailleur (the muddy conditions took many casualties). There’s a spot on course where you rip through a bunch of sweet single-track and then switchback up to a house where there are always people partying and cheering like mad. I couldn’t see the house but I could hear the yelling and cowbells, a group was going by. I timed myself to the house, three minutes, I was just three minutes off the front group (might have been the chase group) with a whole lot of hard miles to go. I was inspired, I was rallying, this is how I wanted to finish the race, (not all bogged down and cracked like the previous year) the lighter gear (33 X 19), had left some fire in my legs for the latter part of the course. I had fire, but I also had cramps, somehow (9,000 feet of climbing) I get through a couple dozen races a year with nary a sign of cramping, and at this thing I cramp all over the place. Nothing that brought me to a halt though, I was able to ride or run through all of it.

Dangerous sections of the course are marked by “X’s”, I was railing down a triple X section, a washed out steep descent, when my rear tire punctured, too catastrophically for the sealant to handle it. This flat fix was particularly protracted due to the muddy slop all over everything involved. The crazy thing was, I waited and waited for someone to come by, I started thinking I had gone off course. Finally the granny gear dude from Garvin came down the slope, asking if I was alright. After that…nothing, no one, I got back on my bike and began chasing the dude who had passed me.

I still felt the rallying thing going, as I came up on the final aid station at mile 47 or whatever, I was rolling up the steep driveway to the red barn (which I refer to as “The Gateway to Hell”), when — BAM! My rear tire blew. Seems I had slashed my sidewall and a bit of tube had hemorrhaged out, catching on something and exploding. There was no way I was fixing another flat in the cold rain, so I rolled past the aid station, standing up and leaning forward, de-weighting over rocks and roots, riding the nose as much as possible, trying no to destroy my rim. The last three miles are some of the hardest in the race, my predicament made it that much more fun. Usually when you hit the grassy ski slope traverse on Mt. Ascutney, you’re home free…not when you have a rear flat, you go a-slidin’ all over the place. That last mile took an eternity, but still no one passed me, small victory.

After five hours and twenty somethin’ minutes I rumbled across the line in 7th place. As I came out of the finishing chute, Michael J. Silverman, the director of this massive charity event was there to greet me, “How long you been riding on that?” “Oh, I decided single-speed wasn’t hard enough so I let the air out at the start line…nah, just the last three miles.” He gave me a big pat on the back.

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