The Bike: Superfly SS

Gear: 33 X 18

Tires: Bontrager Jones XR 2.25s

Place: 3^rd Overall

The Swank 65 is a ridiculously hard, back-country race in the
hills of The Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. It offers up
HUGE climbs, insane kill-you-dead descents, precarious bridge crossings, and
(if you can take your eyes off the demanding trails for even a split second)
magnificent views.

This was my second crack at this event. Last year I showed
up on an unfamiliar and ultimately inadequate bike (it was full-rigid SS…the
infamous Farlow Gap owned me that day), totally fat and out of shape; this year
I showed up on “Precious Thing,” my Superfly SS with front suspension, my favorite
bike ever…totally fat and out of shape. At least the gear was right, I ran a 34
X 20 last year and felt spun out a lot. This year I ran a 33 X 18 and felt that
it was just right, in a horrible, grinding, and awful kind of way.

I have absolutely no idea why, but things actually went
pretty well. I don’t know if it was the massive pile of cheddar-bacon-eggs I
ate that morning at Greenlife in Asheville, or the dozen PBRs and two
Sake-Tinis I drank in Carrboro/Chapel Hill on Friday night; or the fact that I
did away with anything that resembles structured training months ago. Whatever
it was, it worked out a hell of a lot better than expected.

The race kicks off with the much dreaded (by me) Lemans
Start, where bikes are piled up and racers must run around in their, as Brian
Plaster of Johnny’s in Carrboro calls them, “dancing shoes.” Thankfully the
race director announced that he was going to shorten the running course
significantly this year, it was like music (specifically Danzig, but more on
that later) to my ears. BUT, we had to perform a running somersault between two
orange cones just at the end of the run. This would prove difficult and
possibly painful for people with their pockets full of junk and especially
those wearing hydration packs.

A chilly start to the morning at The Swank is normal

Though there was a hard frost on the picnic benches when we
rolled into the venue, by race-thirty it was nigh on 70°. I lined up next to
Cannondale riders Garth Prosser and Matt Lee who I knew were quick. Last year’s winner and 29er Crew
super-bike-soldier-Ninja-Sardaukar-Jedi Sam Koerber was hiding somewhere in
there amongst the 170 riders, waiting to pounce and lay waste to his rivals.
The run was just long enough for me to start hurting and hating life, and then
we were on our bikes going directly uphill and I was throwing my breakfast up
in my mouth. I’ve had bad experiences with bacon as a pre-race meal, but this
time the overly-seasoned breakfast potatoes I’d eaten were overpowering any
feedback the bacon might have been causing. “All right bacon, you get off the
hook this time, but only thanks to those damn-spicy-bastard breakfast
potatoes!”

The first few miles go up, but not in a brutal way, through
rhododendron groves. You’re basically in a strung out, single line of riders,
but when gaps begin to open, you can squeak around the guy in front of you and
get up there if you’ve got the legs. I was content to warm up, sitting in on
the climb, seeing as I had no confidence in my fitness, but when Sam came by I
jumped in his wake, following him up into the front group of about ten who were
separating themselves from the fray. My thought was that I wanted to hang with
Sam at least long enough to see him ride the bridges, as I’d heard he could.
Sure enough, when we came to the first bridge — it was high one, over gnarly
rocks and rushing water, just a few narrow, not much more than a tire’s width
logs, with haphazard cross-hatches on them — he rode out onto that thing, in
traffic, super slow motion, like a circus act, like a tightrope walker, like
Phillipe-freakin’-Petit. I tip toed along behind, trying to watch what I was
doing more than what he was doing. He came off the first bridge and rocketed
around the group of riders who were still getting back on their bikes. When we
came to the next bridge, he rode that too, and then he was gone, that would be
the last we saw of him.

I fell into a group with Garth Prosser, Wes Dickson,
Geoffrey Bergmark, and some other dudes. There was a bit of yo-yoing going on
as we rode the undulating climbs. I got a little gap on Wes and then passed
Garth in some of the more technical stuff, then promptly gored myself on a
stick protruding from the side of the trail. It was just after I said to
myself, “man that stuff was gnarly back there, all those rocks under the
leaves, you could totally wreck yo—GAAH! OW! What the hell?” The stick stabbed
my left leg, sending me flying into a large downed tree over on the other side
of the trail. The Superfly stayed on one side, I flipped over it, landing I’m
not sure how. Wes passed me, asking if I was all right, as I hopped back on my
bike and began riding…all crooked. I stopped to twist my stem back to the
correct position (but still a few degrees off, though I couldn’t bring myself
to lose more time dealing with it) and got rolling again.

I got a matching set of tattoos for third place, good deal

I’m not a guy
who remembers trail names, or names of people I’ve met twelve times, or the pin
number for my ATM card, so excuse me when I say things like, “and then we went
up the climb…the one where you go toward Farlow Gap…then take a left.” I think
Farlow is the only trail name I know. But Farlow makes an impression, sort of
like a hot branding iron does. I have the initials “F.G.” stamped on my brain.
On that climb (that wasn’t Farlow) I shook Wes and threw the tractor beam on
his teammate Geoff up ahead. The tractor beam was weak due to the fact that
power was being diverted to the warp core, which wasn’t even doing much good
since the warp core is kind of soft and flabby these days, because I haven’t
been doing my warp core exercises.

I did see Wes again, briefly. I had just descended some
awesome descent that was like this Rhododendron-lined gully full of snappy
corners. The run-out was long, the trail was overgrown, branches were whipping
against my legs, I hadn’t seen a white ribbon trail marker for what seemed like
miles. Then I came upon a downed tree that was, —slight exaggeration, — up to
my chin. “This is a race course, they would have chain-sawed this thing out
right?” I scrambled over it and then quickly came upon another downed log. “OK,
this is getting ri-god-damn-diculous, I’m turning around.” Luckily I hadn’t
pedaled too far before (apparently fast-descender) Wes Dickson came rolling up,
telling me he was sure we were on track (this a proper backcountry race
y’know). I stomped on the pedals with re-stocked vigor, and that was the last I would see of Wes.

After that, it was into no man’s land for just about the
remainder of the race — a weird place of delusional thoughts and singing out
loud. Danzig was my singing out loud music of choice. While almost any Danzig
is great for singing out loud, “The Hunter” was what I found myself going back
to …cuz I was hunting that rider ahead. When I ran into spectators on the
trail, they laughed at my pink helmet. I wonder what they would have thought if
I came rolling along singing Danzig while wearing a pink helmet. Hey! I see you
in the back of the class smirking. You think this is funny? I’ll have you know
that I have driven home from 24-hour races, dog-tired and deprived of sleep for
in excess of 38 hours, fueled on nothing but DD & D. You think I’m talking
about Dungeon and Dragons (and not proofreading), or some hip new street drug?
— No! What I’m talking about is Dunkin’ Donuts and Danzig. You should try it
sometime Smirk Benedict. What…who is Smirk Benedict? Smirk Benedict is nobody;
it’s a play on DIRK Benedict who played Faceman on The A Team and Starbuck on
Battlestar Galactica you ignoramus. Damn kids today…no sense of history…what’s
that…what kind of dumb name is “Starbucks?” Why you…I bet you can’t even find
Fantasy Island on a map!

And then came Farlow. I wasn’t even sure if I was on Farlow
after I passed the aid station at the corner. I kept asking people, they didn’t
know. I was going under the assumption that it was. Trying to fall into a
rhythm and not pop before the summit. I was oddly happy, thinking to myself,
“Ah, the air so clean…what an awesome view…this is great…so fun for me!” I came
across a guy a ways up, “is this Farlow?” I asked. “Yup, we’re about halfway
done, and it gets steeper toward the top.” Suddenly I was not so oddly happy.
Halfway? I was screwed! Not only does it get steeper, it goes off onto some
jeep roads and gets looser and wetter, it was all I could do to stay on the
bike. And the climb is the easy part.

How do I describe the descent off Farlow Gap? Picture a
steep rockslide, then picture 1,000 monkeys with a 1,000 leaf blowers, blowing
every leaf in Western North Carolina onto that rockslide. And you have to
frickin’ ride down it. Local Marshal Hance had given me very technical, very
Marshal like instructions on how to conquer it, “Just ride the left side, then
when you see the big, knotted tree, go straight toward it, then switch back to
the other side of the trail. Which sounds reasonable, until you realize that
riding down Farlow gap is about as controlled an act as riding in a burning
shopping cart down Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. It went better than my
attempt in ’08, at least I didn’t have to stop several times and rest my
cramping arms, but it still sucked. I made it just to the point where there
were a bunch of spectators, “Yeah! You’re doing great, the hardest part is
over” — WHAM! Down I went. Then
again, then I was walking with my bike. I expected the local boys to descend
upon me any second, “Woo! We ride this stuff on tricycles, what’s yer major
malfunction Yankee-Boy!” But it
didn’t happen.

There are a couple stream crossings after Farlow, which were
hard to traverse while wearing my “dancing shoes.” Then there’s a protracted
hike-a-bike that made me want to lie down and take a nap. But after that it’s
just sweetness, just high speed technical descending for miles and miles. Not
super-steep, just enough of a pitch so the dudes with the gears wouldn’t get
going that much faster than my no-geared-self. That section of the course and
the rolling fast stuff leading up to the final climb was nerve wracking. I was
pretty sure I was sitting in fourth, but a hungry geared rider could tear this
stuff up, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see a rider looming in
the rearview, but still, nothing.

I cranked the final climb, telling myself that this was the
last climb, of my last race of the season, and it didn’t matter if I ripped my
legs off, because they’d grow back by next season. And then… “’Cause I’ve got
you in the sights of my burning…” (Legs, burning legs, thanks again Glen
Danzig). There was the other rider I’d been hunting all day. He was just
reaching the peak of the climb, I laid low, creeping up on him, didn’t want
spook him and send him scurrying, wanted to limit the opportunities for the
geared rider to attack. When I
sprinted across the final gap, he looked over, his face covered in salty sweat
rings and just laughed…almost 40 miles into a 42-mile race and it was on. He
apologized as he attacked on a gravel road downhill, but I sat tight, hanging
in the draft. He kept looking back and shaking his head.

When we got back into the same singetrack we came out of the
start area on, I was breathing (hyperventilating) down the dude’s neck, trying
to make him mess up so I could come around. At the first opportunity I blasted
by him on the left on an uphill, he didn’t seem to have an answer, “he must be
cracked,” I though, “just putting on a show and faking it, trying to bluff me.”
I railed down the rhododendron-lined trails, knowing I was closing on the
Start/Finish. At the bridge crossings, I couldn’t even hear the rider coming,
as I walked slowly over the rickety logs. I started to think I was safe, I
could see the finish, I could hear the people down there, but then SPLOOSH! The
guy came charging up behind me right at a rideable river crossing. I blocked
him, going into a sprint for the final couple corners. There were these tight
chicanes going left and right at the finish, a couple were riddled with huge
roots, I was riding through them as fast as I could, elbows out, trying to keep
the rider from coming around me in the final few feet. I was laughing nervously
and gasping, he was growling and cursing. Coming into the very last turn, just
maybe eight feet from the line, my front wheel slid out, but I kicked with my
left foot, rolling across the line for third place. Phew!

29er Crewer and maker of Kick-Ass cogs Shanna Powell comes through the same finish chute that caused me so much stress

So ya, third overall at The Swank, definitely first single
speed, one place separating me and my teammate/mountain bike hero Sam Koerber.
That’s one really cool thing about this sport, if you’re say, a really huge
football or Baseball fan, or even a huge road cycling fan; you don’t get to
bump elbows with your heroes, never mind line up next to them on a start line (or
see them ride precarious bridges like a ninja). After the race I made it a
point to say hi to Sam, I said, “Hey, we ride for the same team, but on kinda
different levels…” He replied, “You’re pretty good, you got third right? — On a
Single-Speed? That’s good.” What a cool damn sport this is, and what a cool
damn race The Swank is.

Sam and Lucy Koerber post-race. Lucy will probably beat me next year.

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