The Pain Ultra

I tackled this beast Sunday with Wes and Shawn"Scream"Jones. I don't know what was more painful, the race, or riding in a car with Shawn doing 30 in a 55, 40 in a 65, 20 in a 45. But oh well he drove so I can't complain that much. Wes and I had other plans go bad so as of Friday night I got the ok from the boss to do the race. I figured I handled the Mohican 100k pretty well so what is the harm in a 45 mile bike race? Just ride your own race right? I was neither physically or mentally prepared for the ass kickin I was about to receive. After a painfully slow neutral 3 mile start we let it rip. I ran a 32x20 on my single speed and well into the 2nd climb of the day was wishin I had a 21 on the rear and after riding all the singletrack we had done the the other way I was whishin' for a 25 in the rear. This course had 5 or 6 climbs that dwarfed anything on the Mohican course and found myself off the bike pushing and wishing for gears on so many hills. The Shenandoah 100 had the longest hike-a-bike I have ever done, but we were confronted with a straight up quarter mile hike-a-bike-soul-crusher that topped of a brutal race. Would I do this again? Hell yeah. I'd be better prepared next time, plus it would be better to come down and camp to enjoy the atmosphere along the Ohio River and hang with some cool people. As hard as the course was this was beautiful backcoutry Ohio riding.

Team Soupcan Pics

I had a few people ask me where they can look online for some of the pics I was taking so heres the link.

http://s583.photobucket.com/albums/ss273/TeamSoupcan/

I hope this works for everybody. If it dosen't just go to photobucket and search for user name Teamsoupcan.

Vultures Knob Race #3

Crash and burn, that's all I got to say. Made it about 100 yards into the prolouge up the gravel road. A guy went down in front of me, I saw it thought I had plenty of time to go around, I braked and went down. Got up started to pedal and cause of my shitty bike maintenance busted my chain in half. Can't say I never done anything like this before. Guess it was kinda cool. Got to walk the coure with Dr. Soupcan and pound some Old Mlwaukee or as wes calls it "Old Skwak"

Jealousy

I had dreams of winning this. But was reduced to spectator after breakin my chain on my SS. But this is what Bob Rogers proudly gets to display in the family room for the next year. Whos house next year?

mohican 100k

so the 100k has come and gone.Was the most enjoyable endurance event i have done yet.had a pretty good start fought through some slow traffic for a while but ended up not being hampered by to many slow geared guys through the first 15 miles or so. Then hooked up with Mr. davis for about 15 more miles then the trail flattened out and he was gone. Shortly after that gorman blew passed me on a muddy down hill i panicked and tried to counter his move on a climb only to blow up before the top and watch him ride away.The next 20 miles was pretty much hanging on to geared riders as long as i could. Then with about 10 miles to go a single speed rider caught me with a geared friend.Every time i would put distance between us his geared buddy would pull him back however through all this we managed to catch gorman. Once i saw gorman i turned it up a little and in the process lost the other single speeder. I got to gormans wheel only to start cramping pretty bad and had to let him ride away as i had to get off my bike on a few hills.It was still good enough for 3rd place single speed and in the top 15 overall.The best part of these races is getting to hang out with great people for 2 days. I dont think anyone could ever ask for a better team then team soupcan or better people to drink beer with.Hats off to brett davis for his performance that was a stacked field and to be 7th overall is awesome.Then theres lorson top ten overall on a single speed and walked away with the single speed win. If you didnt know he is fast on that thing.The rest of the team did great im as jazzed about their results as i am mine.

photo credit jen f.

Rollin' the MoJo-hican

Yes, what a weekend it was indeed. Why don't more people stay around after the race to celebrate? Mohican adventures has the best accomodations ever! O'dell did a great job putting this one together. We enjoyed his company at the SoupCan SS camp (the "SS" stands for "single speed"; not, I repeat, NOT an Nazi camp). Man, we had so much fun that when it was over we all felt like kids after christmas....bummed. A bunch of middle aged men sleeping in a horse trailer with a disco ball and no responsibilities for 2 days. Heaven. So, we rolled into town after work on Friday and set up shop. We took a short 4 mile ride to make sure our bikes were operating correctly then proceded on to Pizza Hut where we consumed a couple pitchers of beer and ate pizza, hot wings, and lasagna. We traveled back to the camp site where the disco ball was put into effect and brought in guests like moths drawn to a light. We consumed more malted beverages and found our bed rolls by midnight. Lorson's body makes cool sounds; even when he's sleeping. His breathing sounds something like an old train coming into station, "HAAAAA pushhhhhhtttsssshh." Ryan just stinks and snores. Wes is a good sleeping buddy....as gay as that sounds.....he doesn't make a peep. My only beef with him is the 5 a.m. "yeee haaa, get up bitches" wake up call. Race day comes upon us and we proceed to McDonalds for our pre-race chow where Lorson showcases his talents and lets out a symphony of gas that is appreciated by everyone there. A sustained "high C note" reminscent of some of the best work of "Dizzy Gillespie". I really do think that his ass cheeks puff up just like Dizzy's did. It gives him that control and beautiful tone. Bravo! John Lorson, Bravo! Back to camp. Everyone shit at least 3 times. Funny how that shit works. We ride downtown to the starting line and its downright cold. I see people with full jackets on for the race and wonder what in the hell they are going to do with them at the top of Maple Heights (1 mile into the race). At the start, Wes and John take off like its a 9 mile time trial and I think "there's no fucking way I'm gonna blow myself up this early, I'm too much of a pussy to recover from that and ride another 6 hours". So I go medium-hard up the hill and find my own pace. I rode comfortably with Gorman (2nd place) for 5 miles or so thinking he would lead me to the promise land. As we were passing people here and there my back tire exploded off the rim. I yelled "fuck" as loud as I could, but it didn't help any. Should have brought that cone wrench for my chain tensioner. A skinny rock worked after a prolonged hunt for a primitive tool. I got back on the trail and found that passing novice riders is easy because they are courteous and eager to get out of the way. However, passing mid-level riders is not so easy because they really aren't very cooperative (for fear of feeling like a novice rider I guess). Riding a single speed is like having some kind of magical pass though because some riders know momentum is paramount and give you the room. So I learned that yelling, "I'm on a single speed" works to get around people until you yell it to a guy on a single speed. Then the answer is apparently, "so am I, you dick". I had it coming. Nothing real exciting happened to me beyond that for the rest of the race. I found myself in never never land (that gap between fast people and midrange people). I went as fast as I could for the race and had to do an inoordinate amount of passing but never felt bad. That left me with plenty of energy to swill cheap beer and eat Mongolian barbeque at the finish. Brett from the Solon club visited the post race disco at the SoupCan Camp and regaled us with his brand of witty humor along with some youngster from Arkansas. Between his Arkansas draw and his youthful vernacular I didn't understand anything he said. Perhaps it was the mix of American Ale, Dortmunder, Old Millwaukee, and Busch that made things hard to understand. Spinning Todd came down for the post race celebration and surprised me with his willingness to sleep in a camper with a total stranger. I made no guarantees that he wouldn't be a Spinning Todd skin suit but he ended up with first class accomodations. "Wow" is all I can say to John Lorson (1st place) and Wes Jones (3rd place). Great job to Ryan Knoph for 7th. And for me, I finished 6th place in the single speed division, 1st place in the "enjoyed myself" category.

Mohican