So Pantani X has come and gone. I’ll let that sink in for a second. A year until it all gets relived again. Sad. Well, maybe that's good because it'll take about a year to recover before everyone is ready to go at it again.
With that being said; what an event! I’m still riding the high from that race, what a hoot. I’m not really sure where to start on this blog, it’s much more than a race recap that’s for sure. I’m thinking this is going to require a sectioned report across the board; I plan to post and add on so feel free to wait a week for the full spiel or check back daily for updates. If the amount of reading to follow is too much let me summarize everything for you. Awesome people, killer gravel, beer handoffs, steep steep steep climbs, loads of smiles, and another great year in the books.
With that being said; what an event! I’m still riding the high from that race, what a hoot. I’m not really sure where to start on this blog, it’s much more than a race recap that’s for sure. I’m thinking this is going to require a sectioned report across the board; I plan to post and add on so feel free to wait a week for the full spiel or check back daily for updates. If the amount of reading to follow is too much let me summarize everything for you. Awesome people, killer gravel, beer handoffs, steep steep steep climbs, loads of smiles, and another great year in the books.
1. Believe the Hype
What makes Pantani special? Well that would probably be too long a list to create but it begins and ends with all the hype around the event. Thanks to some good work by Mark McCardell on the facebook event and Dave Tevendale on his little blog there is plenty of talk, chatter, smack, and other such activities going on leading up to the event. All the hype creates a huge turnout, I think this year somewhere north of 75. Everyone knows this is the place to be. I think one can argue that the hype begins right after the ride finishes but it really picks up in earnest around the 1st of the year. From there on you really can’t go on a ride without talking about Pantani, which bike to ride, what will the weather be like, can you single speed, who is going to show, who is going to win, when the rider you’re talking thinks you’ll get dropped (Steven, looking at you Mr. you’ll get popped before the steep part of Simmons, no faith, no love), etc. the list goes on. I’m not sure I can really explain Pantani without someone experiencing it, it is just wild. All this hype begs the obvious question though, does the event live up to? How many times have you been to a movie that all your friends told you was the best movie ever produced that turned out to be okay, that party that is just the best thing you’ll go to this year, eh. Hype can ruin an event, sometimes it can’t live up to those expectations. I mean let’s be honest that can be a tough task. Well, Pantani X, you’ve done it, and you’ve done it better. This event is unreal, so go ahead BELIEVE THE HYPE, and don’t miss out on it next year. You’ll want to be there, you can be sure I will be.
2. To the Friends, Old and New
I’m pretty sure this section can be summed up with something Gordon posted on the Facebook shortly after the ride.
“It’s pretty inspiring that I have that many friends and acquaintances who can and will ride that kind of mank in early February and be excited about it!”
To the whole crew that showed up, thanks, you all rock! I have met some great people in and around Charlottesville from cycling but I knew only a small handful of the group that showed up Pantani. It was great to meet a couple more friends and match names to faces. More than getting to meet people it’s this group that really made Pantani fun for me. All the people moving around and taking early shots on Wesley Chapel and Fox Mountain (looking at you Gavin), all the guys hooting and hollering at start, and more than anything, every person coming back in to the parking lot with a huge smile. Seriously, you all put out some serious suffering, likely more than I did, and each person I saw pedal their bike into the parking area just had a ridiculous smile and instantly shared hi fives and hoo rahs with their fellow brothers (and sisters) in arms. That made Pantani special for me. Thank you. Now while I can say lots of wonderful things I have some bones to pick with this crew. Somewhere in the middle of Brokenback I ditched my glasses and my lobster gloves. In order to do so and not lose them I had to take the beer out of my jersey pocket and replace it with said gloves. Well, I couldn't ditch it on the side of the road, so I rode the whole back half of Brokenback with that beer in my left hand and wrist on the handlebar. I thought for sure I could get someone to enjoy it when we saw people coming down Wyatt. NO TAKERS. I mean come on, it couldn’t be wasted and nobody took the offer. Somewhat disappointing, thankfully the great group at the top of Brokenback had my back and took it off my hands. Not sure if they enjoyed if or handed it up to someone further back. So if you enjoyed a Yuengling instead of a PBR at the top, I carried that one around all the climbs just for you! Finally big time ups for Gordon and Charlie, I spent a lot of time suffering with these two, and they definitely made it more enjoyable. Glad you all were there and here’s to more time spent off the front together.
3. UVa Crew
UVa Cycling had a great turnout at Patnani this year, 6 current members plus 3-4 alums who were wearing the V and Sabers. With the club spread out among undergrads and graduate students across different schools racing is usually the only thing that gets everyone together and it's always great to see everybody. I believe the finishing order for the UVa crew was something along the lines of Bryce Lowery, Will Suhring, Steven Cook/Andrew Moore, Will Canup who got there a little bit late and rolled out with the 2nd group, and then Lucas who DNF after he snapped his chain within 2 miles...oops. Of course placing is only so relevant. Bryce is super strong and was the last guy to fall off the front group. Unfortunately he got busted by his road bike going up Brokenback with it's nasty steep grades or I think he could have held his 4th place spot. I'm excited to ride with him on the road. He already has 1 win under his belt and I think he'll tear up B's until he gets his upgrade at which point the A's will have another guy to watch for. Will Suhring is a climbing machine at all of a buck 10 and was able to stay close through the first punches and ended up doing really well overall. He had similar issues to Bryce taking his road bike up the quicksand of Brokenback. Will may not be pulling ahead in final springs but if the road turns up, watch out ACCC (Atlantic Coast Cycling Conference) Will is gonna disappear. I can just about guarantee Andrew and Steven rode the entire ride with huge smiles. Steven said it was one of his best rides this year setting plenty of PRs. All his rode ride time is definitely paying off, even if he complains about every mile he is stuck on pavement. They both got most of the way up Brokenback before they decided to head to the single track at the Blue Ridge School and have some fun. After some great single track ripping they rolled back to base. Classic mountain bikers. Now Mr. Canup, no idea about his ride. Will is probably one of the most enthusiastic people I know, he loves whatever he is doing. That means a couple of things. 1. He gets caught up in whatever he is doing so it could be a while before you see him. 2. He will pop up at a completely unexpected time. 3. Whenever he pops up it'll be with a huge smile on his face. This is exactly what happened at Pantani. Nobody had any idea he came, never told anyone he was coming, and showed up after we had all rolled out. Right as we were taking our group picture we all look over and see him roll in, smile as big as ever. Just a great time. It was so nice to to have most of the team out and it got me really excited for the coming season. Go Hoos!
4. What am I even supposed to do here?!?
As I’ve mentioned you don’t go into Pantani cold, you think about it for hours and hours on end. The amount of times I tried to convince myself to ride my road bike was somewhere north of 100. The amount of times I rethought my race tactic somewhere north of 50. The amount of times I thought about not going to Pantani was somewhere south of 0 though. So the final plan was to rock the 29er hardtail mountain bike. If you have one, it’s the bike. Don’t over think it. Yes you can do it on anything else, you’ll walk, you’ll be slower, and it’ll be harder. If you’re on a road bike and you don’t walk it’s because Pantani got moved to July, Brokenback is dry and you feel comfortable exerting 400W. Once my ride was set, I spent days and hours thinking up my race plan. First I wanted to get Will Suhring along as far as possible, with the crew up and over Fox and hopefully with us at the bottom of Simmons. He kept trying to refuse my help though, oh well; I ended up failing at that anyway. While I had dreams of a friend having my road bike waiting for me at the bottom of Simmons for the run in to the house that ended up just being just that, a dream. Final race plan was simple. Follow Gordon, never lead, and try and steal all the KOMs at the last second. I sure as heck didn’t want to leave Pantani empty handed. So you’ll notice something is missing in this race plan. How was I going to win? Well…I must say I had a small idea and dreams of winning, but Gordon and co were intimidating foes. I’m not sure I ever planned to do anything but hang on, a final hard push at the top of Brokenback maybe, but I was told all week that I wasn’t going to be there. Since riding has just been a big learning experience I’ll chalk this one up as another. From here on out my race plans are going to have a little something special in mind, something that can get me to the top step of the podium. Step 1: Believe, I’m going to start taking heavy doses of Believe, Pantani showed I can hang with some good guys. Good to know.
5. The Chase for the Pink Chapeau (KOM)
If you’ve gotten this far in the blog, give yourself a pat on the back. This is considerably long winded, apologies. Hopefully I can learn the art of brevity for future race reports, that or hopefully none of the races are this good in the future. If you're looking for other blogs on the race you can check them out: Gavin's stoke filled blog, results and a quick synopsis from the race "director", Wilson Hale's single speed craziness or a blog from someone I don't know but read and found it interesting anyway. Looks like we're still waiting on the mighty Quads.
So around the 11:00AM start time, Mr. Pantani Ride himself (Dave Tevendale) gathered the group around, a good 75+ strong, and gave some final race “instructions”. Essentially a “we have no liability so don’t die or get lost” speech. A moment of silence for Scud followed by hoots and hollers for Scud and Pantani X was off.
What a sight that was, 75 riders clogging up the road, unbelievably cool. I started about middle of the front half and was still 30 or so people back of the front. I moved back further to drag Will Suhring closer to the front. Can’t really respond to moves from 30 people back; have to be close to the action to have a chance. With some reluctance I dragged him a bit closer to the front before the turn onto Davis shop Rd. I thought everything would open up and I could get him right to the front before guns went off on Wesley Chapel. Well, apparently all the hype got the fireworks started a little early this year. I looked up as I turned onto Davis Shop and people were long gone down the road. At that point Will’s reluctance caused me to say goodbye and hammer up to the front (so much for being a good teammate, sorry Will). I threw down the hammer as harder than I did all race and proved my point. It’s a lot harder to respond to moves from 30 people back. From there on the riding was sporadic, easy then bang attack, easy attack, hard, attack again. This continued till Fox really got moving upward.
So around the 11:00AM start time, Mr. Pantani Ride himself (Dave Tevendale) gathered the group around, a good 75+ strong, and gave some final race “instructions”. Essentially a “we have no liability so don’t die or get lost” speech. A moment of silence for Scud followed by hoots and hollers for Scud and Pantani X was off.
What a sight that was, 75 riders clogging up the road, unbelievably cool. I started about middle of the front half and was still 30 or so people back of the front. I moved back further to drag Will Suhring closer to the front. Can’t really respond to moves from 30 people back; have to be close to the action to have a chance. With some reluctance I dragged him a bit closer to the front before the turn onto Davis shop Rd. I thought everything would open up and I could get him right to the front before guns went off on Wesley Chapel. Well, apparently all the hype got the fireworks started a little early this year. I looked up as I turned onto Davis Shop and people were long gone down the road. At that point Will’s reluctance caused me to say goodbye and hammer up to the front (so much for being a good teammate, sorry Will). I threw down the hammer as harder than I did all race and proved my point. It’s a lot harder to respond to moves from 30 people back. From there on the riding was sporadic, easy then bang attack, easy attack, hard, attack again. This continued till Fox really got moving upward.
As Fox came around Bryce showed up and apparently Will was there but I never saw him. The ride up Fox was fairly subdued compared to Wesley, hard but less attacky (is that a word?). Somewhere along Fox I decided I felt darn good. I had a little cold earlier and thought it could be a mess, but all thoughts of that went out the window, I felt good. Game on. I wanted the KOMs so I figured I would disregard all Dave Tevendale had said leading up to Pantani about two peaks to Fox. In fact I figured I would disregard my own advice to a fellow racer not to attack on the first peak. So I did and then kicked myself down the descent after, idiot. Oh well, the move instantly created a 3 man group of Gordon, Charlie Snyder and myself and they were nice enough to let me keep the KOM up and over the true Fox. Down Fox and onto 810 for a food break where I immediately got made fun of for not being able to get my banana out of my back pocket with my “Spock Hands”. Cool guys, real cool. 810 got interesting, we just about stopped riding, everyone caught up but no one attacked and the 3 of us that crested Fox together headed to the back to chat and joke around with the group. I had a phantom flat, took the Blackwell Hollow KOM without any contention, and Charlie attempted to relieve himself while riding. Exciting stuff, I know. Jokes were made and fun was had on 810 but that could only last so long with Simmons looming in the not too distant future. Someone finally got bored and attacked up Mission Home and dragged Charlie with him but leaving the rest of us to continue our relaxed pace up and over the top. At this point I made a statement that really came back to bite me. Gordon asked if we should worry about Charlie as he rode up ahead on Mission Home. “Naw, he’s good for sure, but he’ll disappear on the climbs, we’re fine.” Wrong, but I’ll get to that later. By the time we got to the top of Mission Home everyone was back together and down to Simmons we went.
Time to get real, no more messing around, mountains awaited for this merry band of travelers. Up Simmons the race began between the 3 of us (Gordon, Charlie, and Myself) with a fair gap back to Bryce in 4th. Gordon mostly sat in and told stories as we rolled up the hill making it as enjoyable as it can be. I do quite enjoy Simmons Gap. Such a good climb, not too steep, great surface, good switchbacks, it’s just a great “little” climb. The three of us just continued at a steady pace, nothing monstrous, just enough to make sure there was some junk in the legs for Brokenback. Over the top we went with Gordon sneakily snagging the KOM from me, then over the real top, and down we went. Down was a fun experience, my Spock Hands made it a lot more difficult than I desired, I could almost hold on and brake at the same time. Fortunately I made it to the bottom with only one close call, which caused Gordon to decide he’d rather not descend behind me, good idea.
More fuel at the bottom before we hit Brokenback, then bam. Wait what the &!*%, hello, that escalated quickly, jeez, what is this ride, who put the brick wall here. Yup, game was on for sure now. Gordon wanted to chat as we motored up so I obliged, mostly as a façade for the effort being exerted. Topics covered my research, recent books read, and other not so mentionable items. We continued grunting our way up with my GPS auto stopping because we kept dipping below 3 mph. Just barely getting the pedals around for each new revolution, cursing at the hill, steepness and slop combined, we sympathized with those behind us on road and cross bikes…good luck. The further up the climb we went the more I regretted my earlier statement to Gordon, Charlie wasn’t going anywhere, guy is FIT. Minor worry set in as I didn’t want to have him anywhere close to us at the bottom of Simmons, he’s a powerhouse and that could cause issues on the flat road into the finish. Up to the mailboxes he was still with us and even joking around..crap. Once we hit the mailboxes I got the first hint of blood in the water, just an errant wheel tap but it showed he was at least suffering. With the final pitch averaging 17% over the last K I stepped it up just a smidge for a final push. Finally with about ½ mile to the top he cracked. Gordon and I stayed together till the top neither one able to gap the other and both suffering equally. It’s amazing how much time can be created when a half mile is propped upwards at 17%, at the crest Charlie was no longer in sight, but we knew we had to hit the hammer if we wanted to stay away. With some egging on from Gordon we hit it hard across the top. Down to the bottom of Simmons we went with another close call on my part, this time lobster gloveless, oops. At the bottom final sips of water were taken and a 2 man paceline quickly formed for the last hard push back to the finish. While 2 v. 1 and a head start had us feeling a little safe, we weren’t going to take any chances. We hit it hard.
We pushed until we got a long look back and saw no one, finally safe. From there we probably didn’t ride quite in the Spirit of Pantani, instead we sat up a little (should I not admit to this?) and chatted about bikes, racing, and the such up Markwood. Once on Allen drive Gordon got the final jump and took it to the line for the win, sending me home with the Pink Chapeau for KOM and Gordon back to Roanoke with another year in the Maillot Pistachio. What a day in the saddle! |
6. Post Race Beers
This is a fairly specific shout out and thank you to the spirit of Pantani. As the day wrapped up and the chatting by the fire waned the sad realization was made that Pantani was coming to an end and it was time to roll on out. Fortunately I was able to make it last just a little bit longer with the 4 Yuenglings that sat in my back seat. These 4 brews were gladly taken by the folks rolling back in on Markwood. As I held the beers out the window of the car these riders hooted and hollered to get a hold of one of these wonderful recovery drinks. To this tune of hoots and hollers and one "I definitely deserve this", my Pantani came to a close. So I solute you crew of back of packers. For you suffered the most, gave the most, and laid it all out there. So sir, thank you for making my day, and yes, you do deserve it. So drink up, you did it, you conquered the monster and made it out alive. I am both inspired and impressed. Thank you to those unknown folks that made Pantani a lot more fun and last a little bit longer. Cheers!