pj pedals bicycles

Race Stats: 400 miles 17,400 ft of climbing 32.5 hrs 4th place The race had organized a neutral rollout with police escort guiding us for the first 8 miles. That was super cool, and definitely made the highway riding less sketchy. As soon as it ended, and there was immediately attacks going off. Everyone hit their aero bars, and the front group got smaller and smaller. 15 miles from the start was the infamous Old Onalaska/Groveton Road. It has a reputation for being miserably sandy in the best of conditions, and after the massive storms overnight, it was a nightmare. The sand made progress slow and power higher than I would’ve liked. As soon as we hit that section, a guy flew out of nowhere and was out of sight quicker than I thought possible. I figured we’d never see him again, but I learned after the race that he was riding fixie (maybe SS and someone was mistaken) and slowed way down around mile 140.  After an hour or so of sandy riding, we were treated with pretty normal riding...

A couple weeks after TNGA Eric, who had interviewed me after the race, invited me to do the Cohutta Cat route credit card touring style. I had wanted to do it for a while now and was free that weekend, so I was in! A couple weeks before the start, Binary shipped me an incredible almost complete build kit with just a few parts needed from my Scott. Too excited to make the wise decision to ride the bike I was used to, I brought both bikes to the shop on Monday, planning to leave for the start Thursday afternoon. I didn’t get it back until after work on Wednesday, and it poured all day, so I got it set up as best as I could without riding it. On Thursday I had a few minutes to pedal around the neighborhood before packing. Initial impressions were that hardtails were a lot harder than I remembered, but it was tons of fun and very smooth.  I drove up to Chatsworth that evening where I slept in my mom’s car in the Ingles parking lot. Some fine accommodations. I realized when I got there ...

  The race started and there was almost immediately a group of 6 or so. We were definitely going out too hard, but I got to meet the legend Abe Kaufman which made it worth it. Going into Darnell Creek there were just 3 of us, and we all came out at different times. I rode the next 10 miles solo until I stopped to eat and was caught by Miguel from Boulder and Ben from Greenville. We all stayed as a group pretty much the whole day. Ben broke his chain coming into Moccasin Creek, and me and Miguel slowly rolled thinking he would catch up. He didn’t, so we resumed normal pace going up Wildcat. I wasn’t feeling too great after a hard initial push, but we kept pushing until Tray where we stopped for water at the church at the bottom. It started raining almost as soon as we started the climb, and was pretty heavy a few times going up. Tray wasn’t as bad as I remembered it last year, which was nice, but still absolutely brutal. The first jeep road descent was pretty rowdy especially since ...

I had thought in the few weeks leading up to our start that I was well prepared, but that was far from the case as I discovered in the week leading up. After a chat with Nick a few days before, he reminded me to check my brake pads which had been on the bike for what didn’t seem like all that long. Apparently I was wrong, however, and they definitely needed to be replaced. After checking online, I couldn't find any that would be there before I made the drive up to the start Thursday after work. I sent out a message on team snap on the off chance that someone would have the very specific pads for my brakes. Someone said they did, but after picking them up I determined they were marketed wrong, and didn't even come close to fitting. Through some more last minute scrambling, THE Dana Terry found some at Sixes Pit bike shop, and was kind enough to leave work early to go pick them up. They were the same pads as I had before, so there were no fitment issues, but the front brake rubbe...

  Thursday: Me and my dad were going to head up to Clayton to stay in a hotel Thursday night before the start at 8am on Friday. I took my bike to the shop on Tuesday or Wednesday to have some last minute things done (new chain, brake pads, etc.) I went straight to the shop to pick up my bike when school ended. "There's bad news," was the first thing I heard when I walked through the door. I was told that the extremely small crack that I had gotten on my drive side seat stay had progressively gotten worse, and that it would not be safe to ride. I had been monitoring it, but I guess the progress was too slow for me to realize it was worsening. That was a massive blow. After some frantic calls by my mom, Coach Alex saved me and offered to let me borrow his old bike for the race. I brought it to the shop and with Caleb's help at Adventure Cycles we transferred as much of my fit numbers as we could onto it. Very thankful for good people. After it was as good as we could ma...