Tuesday, May 26, 2009

101 Reasons I'm Looking Forward To Mohican 100

(The following is more or less a re-run from an earlier post, but riding comes before blogging.  I've got three days to squeeze in 5 days of work and to pack and finish cleaning/tweaking my bike for Mohican 100 '09 this weekend.  Enjoy and thanks for reading.)

I shared a beer with Floyd Landis last year at the Mohican 100 in Loudonville Ohio. There’s the picture to prove it. Still kick myself for not putting on a team jersey, mainly because my baggy shirt makes my 162 pounds look like 210 next to him. I zip tied devil horns from a Viking helmet I bought at a rummage sale to my helmet and the photo at the header of this blog appeared in Cycling News because of it. I peed on trees. Hundreds of tricked out bikes surrounded me all weekend. A buddy spent at least an hour and a half debating his tire choice while Trek’s Jeremiah Bishop and his teammates rode past our cabin for a pre-ride. My team, friends from all around Cincinnati, Louisville and Columbus shared tools, tweaked bikes and drank dark beers till well past sundown. We piled 4 guys into the truck at dawn and drove to the start. A black cat crossed the road in front of us entering Loudonville. I made the road rollout lead group split with the pros. I got a pint glass filled with Sierra Nevada at the finish line. Despite the trough of free food in the lodge, someone had a deep dish Chicago style pizza delivered to the venue. As for the race, like everyone else I spent the day covered in mud in what turned out to be the first sticky hot and humid day of the summer. I overheated between rest stops, slogged up shoe stealing mucky hills, cleaned my bike, took water cooler paper towel baths, nearly dropped out, got encouragement to continue from teammates, felt good for 5 miles, only to repeat the process over and over again for the next eight and a half hours. You could wait and watch the weather radar and make a last minute call on registration on Friday night, but truthfully there's really nothing that can happen between now and Saturday night that'll make the Mohican 100 more or less fun.

Link to confirmed riders of Mohican 100 here.

1 comment:

StevenG said...

Knock on wood weather looks good for Saturday

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/USOH0525?from=36hr_fcst10DayLink_undeclared