ALLAMUCHY RACE OFF TO A SLICK START
ALLAMUCHY – Team Victory Cycle and the Fast Guy are used to the almost predictable wet weather at the 24 Hours of Allamuchy – a mountain bike racing event that runs around the clock from noon on Saturday, to noon on Sunday.
Their lead off relay man was the first rider to complete the ten mile loop course at the Boy Scouts of America camp grounds here. Steven Petersen of Swanzey, New Hampshire, with several years experience at the event, made every effort to pull away from the pack of riders in the first wave to start.
“After about the half mile I was by myself,” said Petersen. “The course is slick, very slippery, very.”
Slick courses are expected when rain hits rock, but Dan Brannen of Morris Township, and co-director of the event, said that safety dictated a last minutes change due to the rain that fell Friday night.
“We opened the course for practice rides yesterday and the riders came in raving about it,” he said. “They loved it.”
“However there was one section that had a wooden bridge that was very slick due to the rain, and there was an extensive rock garden in that section, which due to the rain, was very slick,” said Brannen. “The whole course was prone to be a little more slick, so we made the decision this morning to cut out a half mile of the course. The course was on the long side anyway, around 11 and a half miles, so we cut that out. I think that was a wise decision.”
Bob and Karen Workman of Blairstown and Chris and Karen Weber of Andover are the reigning experts at course design, according to Brannen.
“They’ve been with the event since its inception,” he said. “We inherited them with the race and they do such a great job and they know all these trails and ride them year round. We leave it entirely up to them. They design the course every year, and they use a different part of the mountain every year to give the trails a chance to come back to life each year.”
“It’s usually within a mile, either side of ten miles and its usually designed so that the fastest riders will do about an hour- the slower riders two hours.”
As darkness fell and riders switched on their lights to pierce the darkness of the trails, Victory Cycle had maintained the lead that Petersen had established.
In what could be a stunning upset, a co-ed team, Bare Naked Cannondale, was in the lead in the two person division. Terry Blanchet of Castleton New York was the first rider to complete a lap in that division.
“I kind of went hard off the start,” said Blanchet. “It makes it a lot easier to keep track of where I am.”
His partner, Bryna Nestor of Albany New York, and Blanchet rode a lap each during the afternoon, then switched to riding two laps apiece before trading places. During the wee hours, each rider will ride four laps while the other sleeps, a common strategy during the night.
Blanchet made it clear their lead was no fluke. “We’re trying to win our mixed division but we are trying to beat all of the men’s teams, too.
Solo riders have it the toughest. In order to win they must commit to staying on their bikes with only food and water breaks for 24 hours. Robert Lichtenwalner of Nazareth Pennsylvania began his eighth lap at 7:27 p.m. with Paul Watson of Edgewater Maryland trailing by 42 minutes as he went back out on his eighth.
Leads can change at any time, with darkness adding another dimension. Lights can go out. Tires can go flat. Chains can derail, or worse, break. Seats can destruct, as one did for a rider Saturday afternoon, who came in with only a stem where the seat had been. One rider had to be taken to a local hospital to have a gash on his forehead stitched up after a spill on the course.
Disaster hit one rider even before the event began according to Brannen. A novice rider went out late Friday at dusk, alone on a practice ride. He had mechanical problems, and with no light as darkness fell, could not find his way back.
His call to 911 took a circuitous route as he directed the 911 operator to the event website. She called the hotline number that only moments before, a staff member had changed to her own cell phone. When the call came in, it went to a live person and not just a hotline mailbox. The staff person was able to direct a rescue squad on all terrain vehicles to bring in the hapless cyclist.
(see next story about this race)
Originally published in the Daily Record of Morris County, on Sunday, August 27, 2006
Copyright, Madeline Bost, 2006
