I’ve been coming up to Cable Wisconsin for a really long time.  Nearly half my lifetime.  It doesn’t seem that long, which, when I think about it, is kind of depressing when I project the time into the future.  Dave Flaten, who finished 2nd last year emailed me about the race, so I thought I’d jot down semi-history from my perspective.

I first came through here on kind of a detour.  I was skiing a cross country ski marathon in Duluth and we ended up driving back through Seeley to have dinner at the Sawmill Saloon. That was my first time and it started from there.

I skied up in Cable for a few years before I came to race.  I actually sent Catherine Walberg up a year before I came and she won.  She said the race was super and I should go race it.

I had heard about Chequamegon, mainly because Greg Lemond raced and won it a couple times.  But I was a bike racer and it was thought of as a tour that a couple guys raced.  Even Lemond didn’t get the respect from the cycling community.  We were all naive.

When the first official MTB World Championships were held in Durango, I was there, finished somewhere in the top 20, maybe 18th, and when I was driving back to Boulder, where I lived, I stopped in Denver to get a paper to see if there was an article about the Worlds.  Instead there was an article about Greg Lemond winning the biggest MTB race in the world, Chequamegon.  I was thinking how screwed up that was.

I’m not sure why I first came up here.  It must have been an open weekend and I’d made a ton of friends by skiing the Birkie.  Anyway, my first year was 1997.  I didn’t pre-ride any of the course back then.  Just kind of a show and go.

Marty Jemison, who rode on the road for USPS, won the race.  He won it that year and the next.  I’m not too big on professional road riders that are doping to come cherry pick MTB races, such as Lance, Levis and Marty.  So I can’t really sign off on Marty’s wins.  He is a nice guy, but beating up on Dave Wiens, Rishi and I, while doping, seems pretty deplorable now. (See Tyler Hamilton’s book, The Secret Race, page 56, where Marty admits starting using EPO in June of ’97.)  Anyway, a bunch of better MTB racers started coming just about the same time, so the door was open and the stakes got higher.

I rode the race three times before I finally won.  I was on the podium all the times before then, but finally figured it out.  I won three times in a row then.

The course back then was way, way different than it is now.  I’d say the race approached a real MTB race sometimes then.  Don’t get me wrong, the course still had the 10-15 miles of Birkie ski trail, but the other “roads” were unmaintained roads, which means super rocky and technical. Climbs that you had to pick your line and could drop guys on.  That isn’t the case now.

The lead vehicle was a motorcycle back then.  So there was actual singletrack on the Martel’s pothole section.  Then quads started using the trails for access and that was gone.  There was singletrack again, for about 4 minutes, two years ago, but that isn’t there now, so the whole course is pretty open.

The course has gotten faster and faster.  I won the race a couple times in the teen’s + two hours.  Now the winning times are all approaching the 2 hour mark.  That is because the trails have turned into maintained roads now.  It is still hard, but fast and hard.

The part of the course, that has stayed the most consistent, is the Seeley Fire Tower climb to the end of the BIrkie Trail section.  This is about a 4-5 mile section that is very selective.  It is super hard climbing and unrelenting.  The race has been decided here most years.  It would be hard for this to change much, so that is a good thing.

I’m not sure how many riders actually do the long course now.  SInce Lifetime Fitness took over the event, I think there are maybe 1000 more riders let in to race, but I don’t know that number. I think it is around 3500, but I could be off.  Whatever the number, there are a lot of bike riders rolling out of Hayward  together.

The start is the most stressful part of the race for most people.  It doesn’t bother me much.  A huge mass rolls out of town, slowly for the first bit, the full off for a couple miles on Hwy 77, until you do a turn onto Rosie’s Field.  It is 30 + mph, everyone pretty spun out.

The issue is that you have your hands stuck on these super wide bars and that you can’t really protect your cockpit like you can on a rode bike.  That, plus there are a lot of riders that are pretty unfamiliar riding in such close quarters at such high speeds.  There have been some pretty crazy crashes at the start before.  Never at the very front, except one year Gene Oberpriller turfed it pretty hard on a tandem, at the front.  But other than that, it has been relatively safe.

I can’t really do a quasi history without mentioning Gary Crandall, aka The Fatman, who directs the events at Chequamegon.  Gary is a super rider friendly promoter.  And area friendly.  He sometimes spent more time volunteering at other events than promoting his own.  He knows everyone in the surrounding community and is a go-to guy here.  The real success of Chequamegon is because of Gary Crandall.  He was inducted into the MTB Hall of Fame in 2003. Very well deserved.

This race has been going on since 1983.  Dennis Kruse, who is a great friend, has done everyone of them.  One of 2 remaining guys.  Dennis just told me that in 1983, he got an award for being the oldest participate.  Crazy.  Gary Crandall raced the event that year.

Okay, this is rambling.  I love this race, even though I’m thoroughly depressed about my prospects on Saturday.  I have met a ton of great friends here and have tons of great memories already.  No matter what happens, it is going to be a life memory day, which is what I try to collect.

 

 

 

As an athlete, sickness is part of the business.  I don’t think that all athletes are hypochondriacs, but most good athletes I know spend a fair amount of mental capacity trying to stay well.

I’ve probably raced sick more than any other person I can think of.  That is mainly because I’ve raced more than about anyone I know.  Both by duration and frequency.

I don’t much like racing full-on sick.  It isn’t fun.  But I’ve really surprised myself a few times, which is always a gift in sport.  Positive surprises are what makes athletes move to higher levels.

One thing about pretty much riding for myself is that no one is forcing me to do about anything. That is a good thing, most of the time, but sometimes you need some help, some outside influences, to nudge you into a certain direction.  When you feel a certain responsibility to teammates, sponsors and such, you never want to let them down, so you nearly always toe the line.

But riding off-road, when team tactics are minimal, at best, justifying racing sick, or even sub-par, gets harder and harder.

What always sways my decision making process is my past experiences of doing nearly the exact some thing before.  I could count on one hand, half of one hand, how many times I regret starting a race sick.  But I can list tons of times where I had positive surprises, super life memories, feeling exactly the same.

I am pretty positive that racing sick doesn’t make you any sicker.  If anything, racing sick can be the catalyst to getting well very quick.  I’ve never got well quicker than a few times I fell ill during a stage race.  Sickness that would normally hang around for a week or two, is over in two or three days, while racing 4+ hours a day.

I’ve won a couple big events sick.  I won a stage of the Biltmore Stage race, a hard race in the rain at the Biltmore estates in Asheville, NC.  I was last guy on until the last lap.  I rode away on a slick descent and then held the lead to the finish.  I beat some pretty great riders that day.   The next day I was well.

I won a Fatboy criterium at Sea Otter, over a decade ago, the day after going to a clinic and getting diagnosed with strep throat.  I had a Zpak antibiotics bottle in my pocket going to the race, but once I take one of those, my racing ability is done.  I won the one hour race, easily, ate the antibiotics and started the drive home.

That isn’t going to happen here in Chequamegon.  I’m not sure exactly what happened, initially I thought it was food poisoning, but now I’m thinking stomach flu or something.  It seems to be lingering on this whole week, I’m not really feeling much better.  I’m not physically ill, like violently ill like initially, I just feel weak and crummy.  This will be the shortest week I’ve ridden this whole year, which isn’t a big deal.  But my power level is pitiful.

And having no power in Chequamegon isn’t good.  I seem to be able to ride off my seat respectable, at least compared to being seated, but that ain’t gonna be enough.

No matter, Chequamegon is a good race to participate in subpar.  I’ve had a blast riding the race after flatting.  There are 3000 other people to interact with.  I’m planning right now on just riding with Catherine tomorrow.  There are definitely lots of advantages to having someone to draft out there.  The majority of the race is on access roads, which are logging roads, snowmobile or atv trails, and such.  There is only around 8 miles of riding on the Birkie Trail, where drafting isn’t that great.  But having someone pacing you, especially someone better, helps immensely.

No matter what happens tomorrow, it is going to be a life experience.  Just listening to my friends tell their race stories is super.  It is going to rain all day today, at least this afternoon, but the soil here absorbs a ton of water, so that isn’t going to be much of an issue.  It might make the FIretower Climb a little trickier, but that is fine.  Tomorrow looks alright as of now.  Okay, back to bed for a bit.