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Steveyo's Unicycle Race Report
Mount Equinox Uphill Bike Race
August 4, 2007
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5.4 miles, 3248 feet elevation gain
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While attending the 2007 Whiteface climb, Mark Premo, a fellow unicyclist from Winooski, Vermont, told me he’d signed up for the August, 2007 climb on Mt. Equinox. I figured he’d probably break my unicycle record so I should at least show up and try to defend my title. Then my hometown, uni-riding buddy Roland Kays signed up, giving the Equinox race a full podium of unicyclists.
Before the race, Roland, Steve and Mark, ready to go.
Photo by Dawn DiCecco
Last time I rode Equinox, in 2005, I was a novice unicycle rider, jerking and twisting around for balance as though dancing to some insane music. I started and finished in last place, and was, after the first few of my many rest stops, always conspicuously last. I was, however the first and only unicyclist, so I won my category. I also became, by default, the unicycle record holder, riding up this Southern Vermont peak in a time of 1:50:17. Since then I’ve improved my technique and ride with a quieter upper body. That would conserve energy for me to accomplish my goals for this year: beating the record, riding to the top without a dismount, and beating Roland and Mark along the way.
I knew they both wanted to win, too. Though I’d edged Mark in the Whiteface climb, he still had me worried. He’d been improving his technique and his cycle, with a wider tire and longer cranks, was more suited to climbing steeper slopes like Equinox. Roland and I ride together all the time, and we know each other from playing Ultimate (disc), another speed and endurance sport. No mysteries here, I knew I’d have to go all out to beat him. He has crazy endurance and always proves to be extremely competitive, with his memorable quote “How is it NOT a race?” applied to almost any situation.
Our July was crowded with camp, ultimate, dog-butlering, and vacation and I didn’t train as rigorously as I had for Whiteface. I rode whenever I could, and Roland and I did a few bigger climbs on the weekends preceding race day. Then, two days before the race, when I’d normally be taking it easy so my muscles would be rested, our Albany Ultimate summer league team had our semi-final game. The game was hot, hard fought, and two hours long, and my legs were still sore on race morning. My only solace is that Roland was on my team, so he had the same hard workout too close to race day.
I’d used a 24 inch wheel for my last Equinox climb and Roland would be using the same this time, because he has only that size and a 36-inch, which is too big for such a long, steep climb. Cocky from my recent success at Whiteface, I decided to try the same wheel I’d used there for Equinox, a Kris Holm 29-incher. It covers more ground and I thought I could keep it spinning, even on this steeper hill. On our training climbs, with he on his 24 and I on my 29, I was slightly faster on flats and gentler slopes and he spun more quickly on the steeper stuff.
Since the mountain is only an hour and a half from home, we drove up early in the morning to make the 7 AM registration and 8 AM start time. Roland picked me up at five o’clock and we were half way there when the sun rose out of the morning’s fog. Even with a wrong turn we arrived at 6:30, in good time to register and have a nice, leisurely visit to the port-o-potties.
Mark soon popped his smiling face around a corner and the trash-talking began. I always blame him for starting it, but I know I’m usually the instigator. With Mark was his better half, Dawn DiCecco, who once again has our eternal gratitude for being our driver, photographer, and warm-clothes-porter.
I always enjoy the pre-race banter among the keyed-up bicyclists, and today was no exception. We got reacquainted with people we knew from previous races and approached by many new folks curious about the how’s and why’s of our unicycles. It always amazes me the respect we’re paid, given the inherent silliness of our choice of hill-climbing machine. To the crowd’s credit, not one person hummed a circus tune or even asked if we juggle. Other odd-balls were a tandem and two heavy beach bikes with upright handlebars three feet wide, one of which was single-speed and looked circa 1960 or so.
This race has what they term a First Mile Prime, which is a $500 cash prize for the competitor with the fastest first mile, with the caveat that they must still finish the race. It was entertaining to watch the earlier starting waves, with a bunch of bikers at the front of each wave tearing away at ungodly speed in pursuit of the big cash bonus. Later, we found out the fastest mile was 5:29, but the second place was a mere half second slower and that bicyclist went on to win the overall race! Truly amazing.
The first three waves started off and then we were lining up and wishing each other luck, though I was silently thinking that hill climbing races have little to do with luck. It’s simply about grueling hard work and pain management.
Unicyclists and tandems start in the over-50 riders’ category, the last wave of starters. Not wanting to obstruct any two-wheelers, we started on the back fringe of the 50 or so riders in our wave. “Bang!” went the gun and off we went, me executing my plan of losing Roland and Mark on the first not-so-steep stretch of road.
Unfortunately, after pedaling hard for several hundred yards, I realized I’d already told Roland my plan and there he was, riding right next to me. With Roland and I neck and neck, pedaling with the determination one can only derive from competition with a closely-matched training partner and good friend, Mark saw that we were out for blood. Mark and Dawn had driven up this road the day before and he was, to say the least, impressed with the steepness. Rounding the bend at a half mile or so, going from steep to steeper, we heard Mark shouting up something like “You guys are CRAZY, I’ll see you at the top!”
As our ride wore on, I’d charge ahead when the slope eased up, and Roland closed the gap and passed me on the harder uphills. Even though we started in back of the pack we rode faster than some bikers, and as we traded back and forth the title of unicycle division leader, we started slowly reeling in bikes one at a time. The road was so steep and everyone was riding so slowly that actually passing someone seemed comically gradual, but we ended up passing many.
Around the first mile mark, the road went from a steep 15% grade down to 6% or so. Although already huffing like a locomotive, I forced myself to speed up this more moderate slope and I opened a 50 foot lead on Roland. Then, at a steep bend in the road, fiddling with my drinking tube, my foot slipped off the pedal and I had an unplanned dismount. I hopped back on quickly, but Roland was already past and cranking up the hill ahead and I had to pump feverishly to catch up again.
With such tough competition I was pushing harder than I ever had before. My legs were scorched from sprinting to catch him and it was all I could do just to stay behind his wheel. After grinding slowly past a couple more bikers, we passed the two mile point and reached the course’s only downhill section. On that tenth of a mile, I was finally able to regain the lead, my bigger wheel eating up the descent faster than his smaller one could. Dwarfing my slight advantage, of course, several bicyclists we’d recently toiled past flew back by us, graphically illustrating the mechanical advantages of coasting and gears.
After the downhill, the road rears back up again, with a sequence of very steep sections far too continuous to be reasonable, punctuated by banked turns which are even steeper. This played out to Roland’s advantage with his smaller wheel and had me questioning my own wheel choice with its higher “gear”. It was getting hard to spin fast enough to stay upright and, in the banked turns, the big wheel pulled hard downhill and made each turn a challenge to negotiate. On one of these sharply tilted curves, I lost my balance again and had my second dismount of the race.
Tired now, it took me two tries to get back on. Looking up the hill, I could see Roland had widened his lead to a hundred yards. The second half of the race offers few gentle slopes where I could make up the lost ground and I began to doubt I could catch him. I was still passing bicyclists, but I knew Roland. He would never let up enough for me to gain back that much ground on him.
Throughout the ride I was near Diana Hanks, a bicyclist whom I know well from several events and there she still was, several yards ahead of me. She’s a hardcore climber and I decided to try to hang with her and her strong, steady cadence. Even though I might not catch Roland, keeping pace with Diana gave me reason to keep pushing hard and we soon reached the 4 mile marker and a flat spot between Little Equinox and Equinox called “the saddle“.
Here was my last chance to win my division, for if Roland was still in sight, I could make up some time on the short, flat saddle. Once there, however, I discovered that he’d increased his lead on the steepening course, because I could no longer see him through the clouds whipping across the alpine meadow. Ah well, I raised up my arms and let the mountain’s stiff breeze cool away some of my sweat, reveling in the momentary but magical feeling of riding on a flat road.
The mile between the saddle and the finish line is the steepest part of the race, and I berserked into the hill to keep the accelerating form of Diana from disappearing into the mists above. She was shouting encouragement my way at a volume that I couldn’t even attempt at my current rate of respiration. We were getting close to the top and the paradise of not pedaling. On the very steepest curve, with a 28% slope, just before the home stretch, it was cheering from the finish line above and ironically, anticipation of stopping, that kept me going.
Rounding the last curve, I finally spotted Roland, but now he was done and cheering for me from the crowd at the top. I didn’t beat him, but I was sure we’d both crushed my old record. With a few yards to go I finally passed Diana and finished with a time of 1:05:47. Roland had beaten me with a 1:02:29, but I was still happy to realize that my new time was 44 and a half minutes faster than the record. He placed 109th and I placed 122nd out of 168 finishers and we were both happy with that.
As we waited for Mark to finished we were inundated with many congratulations, and better, awe and incredulity from our two-wheeled competitors. Bicyclists, their faces portraits of exhaustion, were still trickling across the finish line including an exceptional man. Ray Gerbacher, 72 years young, rode his bike, laden with gear, 120 miles to the race, camping for two nights along the way. There’s always someone one step crazier than the rest.
When Mark pedaled into view, the crowd noise swelled up and the roaring pulled him up the last straightaway, a twinkle in his eye and his smile broader than ever. He finished in 1:35:07, 15 minutes better than my old record. This climb is steeper than any stretch of the infamously difficult Tour de France, and pedaling any human powered vehicle up this mountain puts one in a select group of endorphin-addicts. Unicycling to the top is even more hard-core, and Mark, though a little bummed with his finishing time, had still completed an astounding accomplishment.
After the race, Mark, Roland, Steve (the old guy's too tired to hold up his rig)
Photo by Dawn DiCecco
Dawn was at the top, faithfully cheering for us, and ready with long sleeves when we stopped sweating and started shivering. Then she drove us down the mountain and delivered us to the barbeque at the base tent, where all the race volunteers were serving up copious servings of excellent food to all the hungry racers.
The volunteers are from the Rotary Club of Manchester, VT, who sponsors this race to raise money for the fight against Lyme disease, a good cause if there ever was one. Since my son, Denali, and my dog have both had Lyme, this is an entry fee I never mind paying. Before the awards ceremony a representative of the Lyme Disease Association gave an informative talk about how Lyme and other tick-borne disease is on the rise and moving northward with global warming. After the talk, race coordinators Andy and Steph Holzman presented the awards.
When they got through all the bike categories and age divisions, it was our turn. Andy mentioned I was the first unicyclist to enter, back in ’05, and that my old record was 1:50:17. Then he called up Roland, myself and Mark to stand on the podium and explained that we’d beaten the record by 48, 45 and 15 minutes respectively. The huge improvement of our finishing times, was acknowledged by the crowd with gasps and disbelief. In a brief podium interview, Andy asked if we’d ever done such a climb on bikes, and when Roland and I both said no, the crowd gratified us with another round of impressed murmurs. Then Andy fed a straight line I couldn’t resist.
“Why do you choose to do this on unicycles?” he asked. Seldom offered such a great opening, I quickly bent over, grabbed the mike, and, getting a big laugh from the crowd, I said “We don’t need the training wheel anymore.”
On the podium: Steve (2nd Place), Roland (Winner), Mark (3rd Place)
Photo by Dawn DiCecco
"Gear Up For Lyme" Mt. Equinox Hill Climb Bike Race Website.
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