So back in May we had the pleasure of doing the 2011 Rapha gentleman's race. We were given the chance to invite another team and so we decided that in the spirit of the race (which usually ends in a lot of drinking) we would invite the Ciclismo boys to the show (they are the only other team drinking in the parking lot with us after every race). This turned out to be a good decision when we found ourselves drunk in the hotel pool the night before the race playing grab ass (actually it was just Craig LeBair grabbing everyone else’s ass).
That was the night before…
A little back story: We had figured out who was going to race and had the team all set until the week before captain Jack Drummond, in what I hope is not developing into a pattern, broke his hand trying to race his mountainbike at the Belmont. Luckily for us we had a ringer for a replacement in Jon Goulet. Jon is new to the team this year and is luckily a cat 5. I say luckily because;
#1 he has no business being a cat 5
and #2 each team in the race gets a handicap based on the categories of their respective riders.
So the team now consisted of :
Anthony So
Brendan McGrath
Mikey Green
Geraldo Adasavage
Jon Goulet
And myself
So thanks to Goulet we got an early start time putting us in a position to do well in the race. We had 7 teams starting ahead of us and a lot of faster teams starting after us. As we set out Gerry thought it would be a good idea to get our first flat tire out of the way early and punctured within the first two miles. After that we started to bring back all the teams ahead of us, mostly because they had made wrong turns or crashed or couldn’t ride their bikes because of broken spokes or something. Note to all 4 of you who might read this and plan on doing this race, we had 2 separate GPSs and it came in very handy to confirm what one said against the other, so almost no wrong turns in 135 miles. One of the complaints we all had of the race was the lack of places to refuel along the way. At one point we stopped to ask some people for water at what turned out to be some sort of detox clinic. The employee there was kind enough to take our water bottles and fill them up for us, which we were glad for after hearing the screaming emanating from inside the clinic. I am not sure where it was but it definitely looked like this place:
By the halfway point we had caught all teams except for the 52 Vincents tandem team and kept thinking that they had made a wrong turn or something (because there was no way they were faster than us) until we were continually reminded by their tire tracks that they were still ahead of us. These observations were further confirmed when we got into the checkpoint at mile 88 and found out they were an hour ahead of us even though they started only 45 min ahead of us. Hats off to them, they were killing it out there. No worries though, we were still in second place on the road. After the checkpoint we had the unfortunate luck of having the camera crew join us to take our pictures. Up until this point we had only experienced a few trouble spots and only had to push teammates up a few hills, for the most part though we were keeping together nicely at a swift but sustainable pace. However, the camera has magical powers and when you point that thing at anybody they start to ride faster and begin to drop their teammates without breaking a sweat (this might be why pros ride so fast). At mile 95 and were introduced to first of many categorized climbs that came after already riding 100 miles of “rolling “ hills. Then with about 25 miles left we were caught by the Moots team who were looking much fresher than us. Team BH/Garneau caught up to us next after we were having "some" trouble on a climb. Turns out they had a guy on their tem who had crashed and broken his collarbone but still wanted to finish (if I were judging this competition team BH would have won the toughest lot of the bunch). Unfortunately for them they had to finally stop to get treatment for their broken teammate, probably a wise decision but they were so close to finishing. The only other team to catch us was the bicycling magazine team that was made up of a bunch of really fast ringers. They came by and we exchanged some pleasantries before they continued on to the fastest time of the day, stopping the clock at 8 hours and 55 minutes. We came in at just over 10 hours, a really long day in the saddle for everyone.
Thankfully there was cold beer to be had when we arrived and I ate what may have been the two most delicious hotdogs of my life. We waited a while until our teammate Dan Langlois (who rides on the Rapha Continental team) came in and put an impressive display of sprinting prowess on in the velodrome to beat the Kapplemuur team who came in at the same time. Upon closer inspection it looked like Dan had crashed at some point and was a little torn up. Apparently Dan had gone down on a gravel patch while descending but made it through with only a few minor abrasions.
We hung out for a while afterward but had to get back to the city where we were expected at Andy’s bachelor party.
So just to set things straight, our team raced 135 miles, then drove back to Philly to party until the wee hours of the morning to see that a teammate had a good farewell to the single life.
Our original captain Jack had a bunch of 5-hour energy waiting to bring us back to life. Many thanks to Jack for keeping us astute enough to enjoy the “gentleman’s club”.
So yadda yadda yadda…crash bang boom. (description of events are left out to protect all who were there from ever having to relive them)
The night ended with Anthony and myself getting some pizza at 3am from Lorenzo's on south st. (normally really bad pizza, but that night it tasted like I was eating a piece of Jesus).
Not sure how many years my life was shortened that day but it was definitely worth it. Can't wait to do it again next year.
Photos courtesy of Matt Harris and Jason Cole
