Hey everybody -
I and 4 other unicyclists raced last Saturday in the Whiteface Mountain
Uphill Bike Race.
'My writeup is here.' (http://home.nycap.rr.com/rduhan/race2007/) At
that URL are some links to the professional race photographer's site of
us unicyclists.
I've included the text below.
Whiteface Mountain Uphill Bike Race.
June 16, 2007; 7.9 miles, 3555 feet elevation gain
---
On June 16, 2007, I entered the Whiteface climb for the third year in a
row. In 2005 I was the first person ever to climb this mountain road on
a unicycle, and in 2006 I was still the only racer in the one-wheeler
category. My time in 2005 was an agonizing 1:59:14, as a relative
beginner. Due to some equipment adjustments and much better technique,
in 2006 I bettered my own record with a 1:25:53. But it’s easy to
hold the record if one is the only entrant.
By the time this year’s race rolled around (pun intended),
I’d managed to interest other masochistic uni riders and when the
starting gun went off, five unicyclists began wobbling toward the
distant and oh-so-lofty peak of Whiteface Mountain. The other racers
were Mark Premo and Bill Merrylees from Vermont, Eric Scheer from Rhode
Island, and Max DeMilner from Maine.
I had been training even harder than last year, but all my opponents
had strong resumes. Mark and Eric are both bike racers and training
gurus. Bill is a 30-year veteran of the sport, and he’d been
beating Mark to the top of some big hill climbs in Vermont. And Max,
only 20 years old, had recently completed an unsupported 1000 mile
unicycle tour of New England. Everybody entered this race with reason
to believe they might win our race-within-a-race up this grueling hill.
Of course, I really wanted to win the unicycle category, but I also had
two goals besides winning. My first priority was breaking my record of
1:25:53 and my second aim was to do the whole climb without a dismount.
In 2005 I’d dismounted to rest my ailing, flailing body dozens of
times, but in 2006 I’d stopped only 5 times. If I accomplished
both objectives, I knew it would take a heck of an effort for anyone to
beat me.
Eric arranged to drive from Rhode Island to my house in Albany, New
York, and we drove up to the race in Wilmington NY together. We arrived
around 2:30 PM and joined Mark and his friend Dawn, who became our
capable team manager and driver. Bill and Max arrived shortly and the
entire unicycle contingent of the race gathered in the parking lot of
the aptly-named Grand View Motel. As we stood drinking water, munching
high-energy foods, taking group photos, and jittering our pre-race
jitters, we looked west, directly up at the hulking mass and sharp peak
of Whiteface Mountain, a “grand view” indeed. My friends
looked at me with varying levels of incredulity when I informed them
that that’s where we’d be riding to in a couple
hours’ time.
Then we took our cycles and went down to register and pick up our
race-packets. We all had various rigs, ranging from Eric’s
24-inch wheel, Bill’s 26, Mark’s 27, my 29, and last, but
certainly not least, Max’s 36-inch big wheel. The bikers, most of
them gear-heads, had many questions for us, but mostly they swarmed
around Max and his 36er, a wheel larger than they’d ever seen
before.
Some of the unicyclists had driven the race’s first three mile
stretch, up to the toll booths, and when they came down, Mark said it
didn’t look very steep and he thought Max, with the big wheel,
was the new favorite. I said, “I don’t know, dude. It may
not look steep from inside a car, but when you’re riding up it,
it’s relentless.” Many of the uphill biking addicts, who
know me from previous Northeast hill climbs, asked me if I’d be
able to defend my record, and I honestly said I didn’t know. I
thought the big wheel was effectively too hard of a gear to push up
that hill, but I was worried.
Back at the hotel we all made our final preparations and hydrations,
and Dawn took off in the car for the summit where she’d meet us
after the race. Since the hotel was only one mile, all downhill, to the
starting area, we opted to ride our unis down there. We must have made
quite a sight: a veritable parade of five brightly colored unicyclists,
riding in a tight line down the shoulder of Route 86.
Nearing the start, we passed a group of young female cyclists resting
in the shade of a tree before the race. Smiling and whooping at us, one
singled out young Max on the 36er and shouted “Are you riding
that huge wheel in the race?” Max said, “Yeah, do you think
I’ll win?” She replied “Yeah, and you’ll look
hot doing it!” I turn to see Max grinning hugely and he said
“That’s the best comment I’ve ever gotten.”
Just before the race, as I was conserving energy in the shade of a
building, Mark and Bill were riding around, basking in the attention of
the gathering racers. Bill’s lifelong obsession with unicycles
has given him fine skills and he was idling, one-foot riding and
generally wowing one and two-wheel riders alike with his prowess.
Unfortunately, as he performed a graceful pirouette, there was a loud
“SPROING” and he dismounted, reached down, and pulled a
broken spoke out of his wheel. If that happened to me I would have
fretted and worried, but Bill, a Vermonter to the core, just laughed
and, nonchalantly holding the spoke, said that’s why his wheel
had 35 more.
Soon we were lining up in the first wave of cyclists at the starting
line and the starter was saying “ONE MINUTE!” I can’t
speak for everyone, but all the anticipation and smack-talking from the
preceding months and all the pent-up energy had my stomach doing
flip-flops. As I stood there, I became ridiculously focused on when to
put my foot on the pedal in preparation to free-mount. The importance
of this magnified and I could think about nothing else until the
starter jolted me out of my trance with his shout of “TEN
SECONDS!” I blinked, took a deep breath and raised my right foot
onto the pedal.
The horn went off and I hopped on, dimly aware of Mark doing the same
in my peripheral vision. I now thought of nothing but getting into a
rhythm of spinning my feet, relaxing my upper body to conserve energy
for the unremitting mountain climb ahead. The bicyclists began to
string out and I passed a few of the slower riders as I realized that
Mark was still in front of me. He’s inexperienced, with less than
a year of unicycling, but extremely fit, so despite some flailing,
he’d had a good start and I had to consciously stop myself from
sprinting to catch him. As I steadied myself on the seat’s front
handle and kept my pace constant, I slowly, but surely reeled him in.
As I got next to him he quipped “I had to get in front for the
cameras”.
I laughed but kept spinning, wondering where the others were but not
wanting to waste the energy to twist around to see. As my heart rate
and breathing increased and my thighs began to feel their first
strains, I pedaled past the cone marking the first mile of progress. I
joked with a biker next to me that it’s not that encouraging to
say “one eighth of the way there”. We’d now begun to
taste real pain and fatigue, and the one-mile marker is a slap in the
face reminding us that we’ve barely started the huge task in
front of us. Seeing the steadily climbing road curving endlessly upward
didn’t lighten that mood, so I looked down at the pavement in
front of me thinking “just spin and breathe, breathe and
spin”.
I steadily toiled away the distance and passed the two-mile and then
three-mile mark, pedaling at what I thought was the fastest pace I
could maintain without burning myself out early. Passing the toll
booths at three miles was heartening as I was approaching the halfway
point and the slope eases off slightly for the next mile or so. I
determined to make the most of the easier grade and kept my wheel
spinning, reaching the four mile point, where the angle stiffens to
about a ten percent grade on the steepest portion of the course.
(continued below in the next post)
--
steveyo
steveyo
...like having your own personal rollercoaster...
- a few 'uni race write-ups'
(http://home.nycap.rr.com/rduhan/uni_race_writeups/)
- muni and kokopelli uni 't-shirts, mugs and stickers'
(http://www.cafepress.com/steveyo)
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