Where do things go? The time, for example, but mostly the little things, like your knees or the combination to your bike lock. Who rode to victory in the '15 edition of Paris-Roubaix. When you tested positive for Covid for the first time. I've been warned about this, and I've waited for it for some years, and now here it is: these are the things we begin to forget.
I would be remiss, I think, to invite you to Pantani 2023, which will be SUNDAY, February 12th at 10 AM ET, if I didn't first explain my lack of attendance at the 2022 edition. I tried, I promise you. On Thursday night, the week before Pantani '22, I even led a night ride on the mountain, up Mission home and Simmons, down Wyatt, back up brokenback, and back. Basically the best (worst?) 20 miles of the route. I felt like hell. Not good.
My repeated Covid tests on Friday came up negative, and Saturday AM too. But that was back when those rapid tests were accurate maybe like, 1 in 147 times, and you actually needed a PCR test to confirm the shit was in you. So as most of you beautiful people were lining up in the field on Markwood rd on Saturday morning, resplendent in your new kits and under 65-degree blue skies, I stood for a proper PCR test administered at the local pop-up testing facility, looming over a midget with a swab who, based upon the angle of attack, could really dig in there, knuckles deep into my sinuses, and prove my excuse for not riding Pantani was legit.
It was not. 4 days later, my PCR results came back and I was negative. I did not have Covid when I skipped Pantani '22, despite my best efforts to have it. My hall pass was null and void.
So, I tried to go out and ride Pantani two weeks later, but I failed. Ice and rain and whatever, so I pulled the plug near Fox mountain and came home. O for 2.
Again, I tried sometime near the end of May, trying to pull some semblance of fitness together for Il Giro. But I started late, ran out of time, and again, failed. 0 for 3.
It got worse. While training for the SM100, Hiser and I went out and gave it a shot in July or so. I think it was like 90 degrees when we set out. Again, failure was our fate. We ran out of water going back up brokenback, tucked tail, and came back down to civilization before finishing the last climb. 0 for 4 at this point, and it's starting to feel like it might not happen for me in '22. It had been 18 months since I'd successfully ridden a Pantani loop, and, what the fuck, Bryan Lewis can ride this thing in like 2 hours. What have I become?
Hope springs eternal, of course, and sometime around early August, Andy and I set out to complete a lap, and we finally did it. Near the top of Simmons, we saw a Bobcat, the first one I've seen in Virginia in a very long time. He was a sleek little sucker, sharp, fit, with the kind of dark fur that renders near-invisibility in the forest up there. So was the Bobcat. And I was finally coming around.
So I rode it again a week later. It was sweet, sweet Pantani success. For a loop that I've ridden probably 50 times in my lifetime to that point, just being 2 for 2 felt like a hot streak in Vegas. Ante up, bitches. And watch out SM100, I'm ready.
But leading up to SM100, two things happened.
1) SM100 was cancelled, as many of you know.
2) I got Covid. Like, for realsies, this time.
But the morning of September 4th, I woke up OK, my Covid test was finally coming up negative, and I figured, what the hell, why not. So I went out and rode the SM100 loop anyway. In a year of sucking at pretty much everything, canceling, bailing, and otherwise not being able to do the things I reckoned I should be capable of doing, it seemed appropriate to push through this one. I rode the '22 SM100 in something like 12 hours, alongside a handful of other like-minded individuals who, like me, just weren't willing to let it go. On the way up Narrowback the first time, someone behind me - a veteran - said "you never know when it might be your last one."
For the record, the Shenandoah Mountain 100 is still the best 100 on this planet.
Which brings me to where we are: PANTANI 2023. Il Pantani 2023 will be Sunday, February 12th at 10 AM ET. I'll try to log back in here over the coming weeks and provide some additional commentary, instruction, and institutional lore that might serve to motivate you to turn up and get down. (Rob Issem, send me some keg photos.)
But given recent history and the lessons learned from 2022, don't be afraid to count on yourself.
Up, up, up.
