Long Live The Kane

Ain't.
No.
Half.
Steppin'.

Less than 3 weeks out...Sign up for the JGST:
https://www.bikereg.com/crc-fundraiser

Up, up, up.

James Gist Short Track - 3.17.18 - SIGN UP

It's hard to sum up James Gist.  Renaissance man is way, way overused in modern times, but I think that's the proper way to describe him.

You probably know James as the one time president of CRC.  2008 or so, I guess.  That's pre-Scanlon presidency, which is, of course, before McCardell got his filthy paws on the presidency, which immediately precedes the long hike to the top that now makes Will Leet our leader.  (I offer the word "hike" without further comment.)

Outside of bikes, I put together an incomplete list of other rad stuff that James Gist is into:
Remote control things
Poker
Electronics
Paintball
Anything fast
Parenting
Grills
I'm forgetting a ton of things here.  James is, without compare, the most well-rounded person I know.  He is literally good at everything.

James, in case you haven't heard, finds himself in a fight with ALS right now.  You can follow his story here, pause for a moment and sob to yourself, HOLY SHIT, and spend the rest of the day pondering all the things in life that you cannot control.

Once you've done that, and pretty much all the problems in your own life are put into perspective as mere peanuts, you'll probably wonder...what can I do?  Here we go:

1)  Give.  You can do so via the link.  https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/7ZMZTyZ4uO

2)  Sign up for the inaugural James Gist Short Track.  There was, in the mid 00's here in Charlottesville, no fiercer short track racer than James.  (He could also fuck up a plate of brownies faster than a Saint Bernard.)  It will be, I hope, a proper way to do him proud, come together as a community, and support his family financially and otherwise.

More to come about James, the cause, and the race in the coming weeks, but I'll trail off here for now and let the links above do the talking.

Make a difference, and keep looking up up up.

That was a slog, eh?

On Sunday, I was pretty shocked when 60-some masochists showed up in my driveway looking for the slightly adjusted start line of Il Pantani 2018,  bound and determined to do that to themselves.  The Pantani route on a dry day is one thing, but Pantani in the mud is a real slog.   

The lineup, too, was impressive, and Dave Flatten came away with the W.  He's now won the two most treacherous Pantanis on record- outsprinting superpro Jeremiah Bishop a few years ago in a frozen tundra hoth-version of Pantani, and then riding local hero Johnny P off his wheel in the slop this go round.  It was a dogfight up there, I've been told, but apparently "Flatten" - when it comes to word choice - is a misnomer.  That guy does not suck.  

The view from the back, as always, was less dramatic.  There was this long stretch in the middle of the afternoon when my legs and I simply had to talk it out, nearing the start of the brokenback climb, and we've both done this enough times to know what was coming.  Veterans of this negotiation, we both knew we couldn't get everything we wanted out of this relationship any longer.  I, for one, was insisting that we go up brokenback, because we might be nearing 3 hours already but I still have my pride for heaven's sake, and my legs, on the other hand, were demanding we swing by the store and Dyke and just see, for a few minutes, if they had any sausage gravy we could lie in for a while.  

In the end, a deal was struck and up we went - a 3 mile, 1600 foot compromise where I agreed not to demand too much if my legs agreed to just get it the fuck over with.  And so I didn't and they did.  4 hours and change later, I made it home and, like always, I was a mess.  After trying to stuff my gravel bike into the trashcan for the first little bit, I settled down and got some food and I was OK.  The bike didn't fit, fortunately, but that reminds me I need to put a new cable and housing on there, plus a rider who can actually pedal it worth a damn.  

One thing about Brokenback, especially when you lack the fitness to really get after it, is that it lays you bare.  You're defenseless, having only one plodding speed forward.  And if you stop for just a second, you can ponder the silence out there, which, except for your own ragged breathing, is complete.  Try it one time, and you'll recognize the enormity of it all, as well as your own tremendous smallness: that the mountain was a mountain long before there was a road there.

It puts me back together every time.

So thanks for coming out, you bunch of loonies.  Until next time...Up, up, up.

The Long Arm of the Laws of Physics - AKA Your Chronological-Pantani Guide

Pantani 1, 2005ish

You can run but you can't hide.

And let's be honest, you probably shouldn't even be running in the first place.  I'm not sure if you've noticed, but foot travel is miserable, awful stuff, a leading cause of overuse injury in former athletes such as ourselves.  Which only makes my point for me: the truth always comes out.

Sunday, February 11th, 10:00 AM.  Delusions of grandeur.  They're so easy to let seep in.  On the drive out Earlysville rd on Sunday morning, quite possibly in a wide open deluge, it'll be tempting to imagine yourself mixing it up in the top 10 of Il Pantani Ride on Simmons gap, maybe taking a surge or two near the front, and then dropping everyone on the way down Wyatt Mtn with your imeccable handling skills, never to see them again. That's a solo attack, on a descent, from 21 miles out, and in your daydream you make it stick.

But somewhere along the way, be it the first car you see when you pull into the possibly submerged parking area or when you finally hit the wall on brokenback, physics eventually sets in.  It Always Does.  You can't hide from it.  No matter how much time you might have spent pretending you don't weigh 190 lbs, or how many half-hearted intervals you did on your indoor trainer that doesn't quite fit, or how often you considered trying to get up tomorrow morning and do a big ride before work, the truth comes out.

10:30 AM - Hopefully, that happens early.  Ideally, you pull into the parking lot, and it all goes up in smoke right away as you watch carloads of skinny, fit, racers put on a shocking lack of clothes, grab a single water bottle, and head for the start line.  They look like super-fit extras from a Lance Armstrong documentary.  Best case scenario - you immediately have a gut check - like, right in the actual gut, which is poking out of your bibs around the edges like some kind of small alien.  These guys are here to race, like, real, fast wide open racing - and you're just...not.  I mean, you'll have fun, don't get me wrong, but you quickly have the personal reckoning necessary for your own survival - right there in the parking lot - and you make a promise to yourself and your legs that you will let them go down markwood at the start.  Do not chase them.

11 AM.  Sadly, like a lot of promises you make to yourself, this one doesn't hold up either.  The gun goes off and the pace ramps up and for whatever reason, you find yourself on the 6 of some emaciated racer-type that looks like he's been skipping dinner to do intervals for about the last 18 months or so.  He also looks, from the back, like he might be 16 years old. FUCK THAT CHILD.  You can hang with these kids.
So you do.
For 3 miles.

11:07 AM.  Before you notice it, there's a gentle rise - this is arguably the first real hill, and it's barely that - but some asshole at the front has stood up, mashed a gear or two, and the elastic has snapped somewhere  about 5 bikes in front of you.  How has this happened already?  You don't even have your queue sheet out yet.  There's panic all around you as riders scramble to make it across the gap, on the first hill, and you're not even 10 minutes in yet.  You bury yourself, but you don't make it either, and you settle into what might be called "chase 3" were such a commentary taking place, which it is certainly not.  A left turn across traffic, an insane amount of drafting and hammering, and you finally hit the first bit of gravel, and holy shit, you are popped, and it's bad.  You look at your odometer, and it reads 7 miles.  It's real bad.

11:15 - 12:30ish.  For the next several minutes, you weave in and out of consciousness and hallucination, on gravel, pavement, and mud-road, at times with others and at times alone, wondering where in the world you possibly are.  Thunder cracks somewhere to your left, and it starts to drizzle.

1 PM.  Near the top of a terrible long climb, someone in Camo pants and a pink Hello Kitty sleeveless romper hands you a jar of what might be bourbon, and you suck at it, greedily, like a baby goat.  What will be will be, you tell yourself, the idea of your own fate being sealed is actually comforting for you at this moment.  This is actually the last time you look at your watch.

Sometime after 1 PM.  Down, down down from there - into the abyss that is Bacon Hollow, and down the pavement even farther, looking for that right-hander, harbinger of doom - the hell climb sign for brokenback mtn rd.  You see it, turn right, hit a 20% gravel wall, and immediately you cramp and everything goes red, and the walls along the side of the road start to collapse around you.  You're pretty sure you black out.

2 PM?  Here, we cut to a montage - 10 minutes or so of you rolling around in the mud and leaves on the edge of the road, down into the gutter, spliced to footage of your childhood, riding bikes in the yard and actually enjoying it, that time you ate all of your halloween candy the first night and threw up in your bed, your first real heartbreak, the birth of your first child, and back to you, rolling around.  You're actually downhill from where you dropped your bike now, fully in the gutter, and squealing like some kind of injured, wild animal.  Oliver Stone-like cut to Piggy in the chase scene from Lord Of The Flies...and, you black out again.


Time and date: Unknown.  A while later, farther up the mountain, and you regain consciousness just long enough to realize people are staring at you while you are having some kind of grown-man tantrum.  It's unclear how you've progressed up the mountain as far as you have, but it appears you've taken your front wheel off and thrown it off the road, down into the woods, and someone you recognize has actually gone down there, picked it up for you, and is trying to convince you to put it back on your bike.  NO.  You fall back into a rage-filled, bonk-induced tantrum, and it all goes red again.  It's unclear, doubtful even, that you will be going further.

But, moments of blackness later, by some miracle you do pop back out of it.  It's not good though.  You're in some kind of a trance, dragging your bike uphill by the front wheel, derailleur side down.  It occurs to you that you're weeping and you don't care.  It's super steep.  Like, self-arrest with your ice axe if you fall kind of steep, but you're near the top somehow.  Did you hitchhike?  Were there cars?  All questions you don't have answers for.  But you come to the top and that guy with the bourbon in the Hello Kitty Romper is there again.  Someone says this is an "aid station" and you yell Don't Touch Me.

Down, down, down again from there.  All the way back down simmons.  It's both pouring rain and the sun is shining, which doesn't strike you as odd at this point.  And there are still some pour souls on their way UP that mountain.  You tell them how awesome it is back there behind you, where hell happened, and somehow you really mean it.  That was amazing.

3 PM - Back onto pavement, there's sunshine, and a tailwind, and you realize you're actually getting hot and it feels amazing now.  You join up with a few other weary riders, in various states of disrepair, and together you limp back up markwood.  Somewhere near the finish, you sense the group starting to splinter, and someone jumps to sprint for the finish in what is, more than likely, the bottom 50 or so.  You finish, pretty destroyed, a shade under 5 hours.

4 PM - There's no shame at the finish line of Pantani, but there is a lot of beer.  Suns out, guns out, and - half-naked in the backseat of your car - you eat all the soup you brought that you intended to share with your fellow podium standers, back before the awful truth revealed itself about who and what you really are.

Pantani, if he could see you now, would be worried.

But you'll be fit next year, eh?

Just gotta get a little rest first.

Keep dreaming.

Keep looking up, up, up.

Your 100% Accurate and Dependable Pantani Weather Forecasts

The weather forecast in February here in the Commonwealth can be difficult to interpret, especially when you're planning on riding Pantani this weekend and your life might depend on how you dress.

On Sunday morning, what does "50's with a chance of rain" actually mean when you poke your head out of the shire and then decide to put pants on before noon for a change?

Allow me to stand in and give a more precise, Pantani-cast.
Suck it, Punxsutawney Phil.

Here's the forecast.

SUNDAY:  60 Degrees and clearing skies.  Chance of a shower, but not really.  When I say a chance, what I really mean is it'll be amazing outside.  Great weather for a hike, Will Leet.

Orrrrrr....

SUNDAY: High in the low 50's, but the really low, shitty ones.  And by 50s, I mean 42.   Rain. But when I say rain, I'm talking about down here in civilization, where life exists.  Back there in the holler, near the top of Brokenback, it's like you're on a different planet, and the heretofore predicted 50 degrees and rain is actually a full on blizzard.  90% chance of frostbite with a 60% chance of Donner party type shit.  Take a weapon and shoot first.

So there you go.  Two forecasts for the price of none.
You
Are
Welcome.
That clears it right up then, eh?

You know, when it comes to the weather, it's OK to be concerned.

But equally impactful when it comes to not perishing on Sunday, is a clear and precise assessment of the road conditions.  For example, will there be a foot of snow back there on the mountain that fell on Wednesday?  Did the county get antsy with the grader and heavy equipment and dredge Fox Mountain right down to the bedrock for reasons that no one can explain?  Is the gravel frozen or so soft that I'll sink in to my hubs?  These questions, sadly, I can't answer for you - because I haven't been back there in a while.  So while I can handle the weather with the utmost of authority, I'll need you, the people, to chime in with your conditions reports pronto.

So please, get chatty in the comments section, for the good of mankind.

Up, up, up.

What Bike Should I Ride for Pantani?

For years, when people have asked me what bike they should ride for the Pantani ride, I have referred them to a bit of Qwadsworthian wisdom that he was given in a peyote-dream long, long ago.   It goes like this:

"The Pantani course is a lot like this sex dream I keep having about Joan Rivers.  It starts off pretty hot, she's young, I'm into her, she's digging me.  But then I get her up to my room, and all of the sudden it's more like one of those naked at a public election dreams, but Joan is still there, and holy shit, she's way older than I thought, and then the whole dream goes Sci-Fi, and she's got this huge green lizard tail growing out of her tits.  And then it gets really violent, and I have to escape, and I won't go into details, but it's moments like that when you're glad you're not on a road bike.  That's how the Pantani ride is."

I pasted that in fuchsia because, you know, peyote and all.

Recently though, someone reminded me that Joan Rivers had passed away, and I should stop publishing such filth.  Joan Rivers would never let a scuzbucket like Qwadsworth see her lizard tail, even in a peyote dream.  And they are absolutely correct.  So I had to go back to the man, the oracle himself, one more time and get a more up-to-date quote from him about what bike he would ride at Pantani and why.  And he responded a little something like this:
Mountain bike. They are for mountains.

If Pantani had ridden MTB he’d have never died.

He’d be toking up in the green room snacking on jelly beans

It's hard to argue with that logic. In fact, it made me go a little misty-eyed. If there's one thing that this world could use a little more of right now, it's a stoned, mountain biker version of Marco Pantani - professing the truth about what's important in life and how close he came to self-destruction - and helping to get others back on track to the good life.

But since we don't have that, we have Qwadsworth.


Which is OK, but obviously not the same.
Still, it's fair advice about what bike to ride at Pantani, and how to live your life.

Not convinced?
Me neither.  I have long suspected - even before B-slow rode around the Pantani course in 2:39 or some such bullshit - that a straight up road bike, in the right conditions, on the right day, with the right legs, is way, way faster (despite the fact that I have exactly none of those things.)  So I reached out to B-slow to ask.  Keep in mind he once rode Pantani on his hardtail mtb too, only getting pipped at the line by Qwadsworth in a sprint - so he's done the ride ridiculously fast both ways.  Here's what B-Slow had to say on the matter:

If I give one bad piece of advice for Pantani it’s that I see no reason you can’t ride a road bike. I train on those roads all the time. But other things I do: avoid alcohol for long stretches, ride 20+ hours a week, have salads for dinner and go to bed hungry, and race across the USA. The safe bet is always the MTB. You will never be upset you chose a mountain bike. It’s sort of like grabbing that extra layer of clothing when it’s cold. You’re never mad to be a little warm and you’ll never be mad to have a little more grip and gearing plus mtb shoes are (sort of) made for walking. Just ask Will.

Is that advice?  I'm not sure.  But again, it's hard to argue with that kind of logic.  Especially the part about Will Leet walking, which, as I may have mentioned, is one of my favorite moments of all time.  

But can you really trust a guy who used to do this?

Maybe?  Look, I don't have all the answers.  Nor do I actually have a point.  Mostly, I'm just trying to hide from the reality of what we'll be doing to ourselves in 10 short days, and debating what bike to ride is as good as anything else.  I'll gladly accept other questions to distract you from the awful truth about next Sunday, so fire away.  

Foe example:  Why don't Qwadsworth and B-slow both show up, mtb vs road, and solve this shit once and for all?

Why, after all, the hell not?  

Up, up, up?