Hey everybody -
I and 4 other unicyclists raced last Saturday in the Whiteface Mountain Uphill Bike Race.
My writeup is here. 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)
. In fact, next year you should ride this on your 36UW! I’d buy the beer if you did that!