Steveyo's WHITEFACE FOLIAGE HILL CLIMB BIKE RACE, September 2007

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September 16, 2007

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7.9 miles, 3555 feet elevation gain

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It usually takes a year for me to forget the pain of unicycling Whiteface’s toll road and ride it again. After talking with one of my friends, Eric Scheer from Rhode Island, however, we decided to give the autumn version of the race a try this year, despite only three months since our last time up. My hometown buddy from Albany, Roland Kays, a guy who learned to ride based on my recommendation and on my loaned unicycle, not to mention a grabber-of-my-record in the 2007 Mt. Equinox race this August, also decided to enter this fall’s Whiteface race.

Eric drove the 3 and ½ hours to my place in Albany, and I drove us up to the Grand View Motel in Wilmington, NY, just a mile from the race’s start. Roland was coming from Vermont, and wasn’t sure where he was staying. After Eric and I picked up our race packets, ate dinner and saw sights in Lake Placid, we returned to see Roland’s slim silhouette drinking the silhouette of a giant-size beer in our motel room’s window. I introduced Roland to Eric and we discovered Roland had brought a few more pint-sized beers. Considering the race started at 8:00 AM, Eric only had a small cup, and I only drank slightly more. Roland, however, polished off the huge can he was drinking and the larger part of two more pints. After that, I felt sure he’d never beat me the next morning.

Roland’s KH24 wheel had a sprung spoke and he’d had some difficulty getting his tire to seat properly, so Eric took charge and capably set all to rights, minus the spoke. Roland was saved from having to ride his spare unicycle, with its 36-inch wheel, up the mountain. Even for a guy like him, who eats pain and craps energizer bunnies, this would have required superhuman effort.

The alarm rang at 5:48AM and we got up and dressed quickly to get an early breakfast and prime our bodily functions to happen before the early race start time. The Country Bear restaurant claimed to open at 6AM but at ten past six all we got from inside the restaurant was a vague promise of 5 or 10 more minutes! We grabbed convenient store coffee and went back to our room for a champions’ breakfast of donuts and instant oatmeal. Roland drove to the ski lodge get his race packet, then drove back again after forgetting to take his race bib-numbers.

The morning dawned cold, right around freezing, but the Adirondack skies were beautifully clear, except for a lone cloud crowning the peak of “our” mountain, Whiteface. We suited up, packed our warm-clothes bag for transport to the summit, grabbed our unis and drove to the race start. I made a last-second drive back to the room, having forgotten my GPS. I’d been looking forward to the elevation graph the GPS would produce from this ride since I bought the device a month before, and I wasn’t going to leave it behind.

When I got back to the parking lot we gathered around the starting line and the starter began his countdown. It’s a surreal moment, right before the start. This was my fourth time on this mountain, but there’s still a surge of adrenaline, a flip-flopping stomach, and a strange doom-like feeling as you know you’re about to be beaten to a pulp by the upcoming effort.

Four-three-two-one and off we went. Roland and I train and ride together, and we stayed dead even, despite each trying to surge ahead. Our pace, as a result, was one neither of us could quite sustain after the first two miles, but we did succeed in pulling away from Eric, taking him out of the equation, at least for the moment. At one point during this first stretch, I spied a huge bird soaring over the road-side trees and asked Roland, a bird expert, “Hey is that a great blue heron?” I’m not sure if he thought this was just a distraction ploy, but he blurted “Can’t look…pedaling!”

Since Roland’s KH24 unicycle has a 24-inch wheel and my KH29 has a 29-inch, I got more distance per pedal, but he could spin better on the steeps. Knowing this, I had to make the most of the less steep parts of the course. After two and half miles I suddenly seemed to have a substantial lead. Unbeknownst to me, Roland had stopped to tighten his seat-post clamp, thus giving me the lead. At the time, though, I surmised that my wheel was better suited to this climb and bragging rights would now be mine. Not so fast.

After another mile or so I turned to see Roland only a couple dozen yards behind me, spinning his legs like an overcharged Cuisinart. Dang! I responded in kind and we spent the middle miles of the course dueling head to head, neither giving an inch. At four miles, the steepest section started, with around a 10% grade, and I managed to fight my way for another mile and a half or so, keeping pace with the madman next to me. Around five and half miles, however, he pulled ahead a few yards, and then a few more. I was feeling a bit wobbly and decided to suck down an energy gel and drink some water. Even though I lost a few more yards fiddling with these tasks, I was thinking now I’d have the energy to catch him.

When the steepest section finally relented at the first big hairpin, the “Lake Placid Turn”, Roland had opened up around a 100 yard lead, far enough from me that I couldn’t read his race number. As the hill flattened somewhat to around 6% grade, I pretended to feel the energy from the gel I’d consumed and forced myself to utilize the advantage of my bigger wheel by spinning the pedals as fast as I could. My GPS showed my speed flickering up near 10 mph and I began to close the gap between us. By the 7 mile marker, when the slope resumed its 8-9 % grade, I’d cut Roland’s lead in half and could read his number again. Even better, I had him worried. A few times, I noticed him glancing back over his shoulder to mark my position, then putting his head back down to crank harder.

Encouraged, I determined to crank harder, too, but on this section his smaller gear and competitive attitude was keeping him ahead of me. As he, and then I close behind, rounded the last hairpin, the “Wilmington Turn”, and headed though the cliff-lined chute of the final half mile, I knew I was running out of race-course on which to catch him. I pushed the pain from my mind and spun furiously, but I knew from riding with Roland, animal that he is, that he’d certainly be doing the same thing. He passed over the finish line and 24 seconds later, as his uni was still clattering to the pavement, I pedaled across. He finished 48th and I was 50th place out of 81 racers.

The first three unicycle records here were set by me. In 2005 I wobbled to an uncontested 1:59:14. In 2006, still the only unicycle but better prepared, I crushed that in 1:25:53. Then, just three months ago, in June, 2007, as one of five competitors in the uni division, I rode to a 1:20:56 and it seemed I was getting close to my limit. But the stiff competition offered by my buddy Roland spurred me to beat that mark by 5 and a half minutes as I broke my record with a 1:15:23. Roland, however, finished in 1:14:59, which now stands as the unicycle record in the Whiteface Mountain Uphill.

The mountaintop was still swathed in cloud and the cold night had left the stunted trees with a frosty white coating. Occasional holes in the mist offered stunning views of the surrounding lakes and valleys as we and the other sweaty cyclists shivered their way up to the pile of warm clothes bags behind the snack-and-drink table. Returning to the line, we waited for Eric, who finished with a similar time to his last race here, around 1:34. He was a little disappointed, but, as the gasps at the awards ceremony reminded us, the bicyclists think our endeavors were bordering on the miraculous, however long it took us.

There may not be any unicycles at the next Whiteface climb, and, in any case, Roland’s sub-1:15 finish may stand for a long while. Next June, there’s a monstrous, international, Tour de France style race for unicycles only and most us us will be there instead. Called “Ride the Lobster”, we will ride from the Southern to the Northern tip of the province of Nova Scotia, a distance of about 800km. It will be a relay with teams of three riders sharing the riding, passing a GPS-enabled relay baton, allowing real-time web-tracking of the racers’ progress. It will be extremely competitive and there’s a generous amount of prize money. My secret? Roland will be on my team…

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My cycle specs: 2005 Kris Holm KH29XC Unicycle, 29" Big Apple 2.0 tire, 165mm cranks, KH Freeride Seat

Roland's cycle specs: 2005 Kris Holm KH24XC Unicycle, 24" Hookworm 2.0 tire, 150mm cranks, KH Seat

Eric's cycle specs: Semcycle 24" wheel, 125 mm cranks

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GPS-generated charts and maps - I think these are cool.

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(I love this new GPS - Garmin Forerunner 205.)

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GPS graph of my speed - note faster first mile, then again at the 6.5 mile hairpin