On The Schardar: Racing to Dizzying Heights

Every 4th of July weekend in the mid/late 90's, I used to go camping/cycling with my friends Mark Hess, Ron Lutz, Dan Chew, and Warren Delraso at the Horseshoe Campground in Tucker County, WV. I've grown to love that area and have some great memories from those days. So when I found out about a race on May 28, 2011 in that exact same area where I used to camp with my buds, I just had to do it.

The Tour of Tucker County is billed as "Voted as one of the Top 10 Hardest Race Courses in America by VeloNews Magazine". Knowing the area, I can see how it was voted as such. The course distance for my race group was 35 miles, and while the finish line was at the top of a mountain on Sugarlands Road, the start line was near the bottom. That mountain road is so long and steep, that as we rolled down the mountain to the start line, several rider's tires went flat from their rims getting so hot from braking and heating the air in their tires. The air expanded and didn't have anywhere to go and... pshhhhhhhhh, flat. Pretty amazing.

Our race started around 12:30, and for the first six miles the course was gently rolling and we stayed together as a group. At the six mile mark we rode into a small village called St. George and that's where the fireworks started. St. George is at the base of a loooong climb, gradual in some spots, and steeper in others. As we started the climb the attacks came fast and hard. The tempo was strong but I was managing to somewhat stay with it. In fact, surprisingly I was feeling pretty good as a "non-climber" going up this climb with the group. But a few minutes into this climb I started getting into trouble. I have a condition with my inner ears where they hold fluid, or something like that, and sometimes when I climb very hard and there's a lot of pressure, I get very dizzy (I constantly have ringing in my ears too). So going up this climb this hard made me dizzier and dizzier. I got to the point where a good bit of my effort was going towards just keeping upright and not falling over. I caught myself riding off the road a few times and into the gravel berm of the road. This went on for what seemed like forever, but really just a few minutes. I eased up to try to alleviate the pressure. My inner ears finally drained, or whatever they needed to do, and the dizziness went away and I was back to normal, though I lost a fair amount of time. Fortunately, the top of this climb was coming soon, and then it was all downhill to the base of the final climb, and that's one thing I can do very well... go downhill fast. I knew that once I hit the decent, it was a freefall at 40+ MPH and I would catch some riders. Sure enough, a little into the decent, I caught one guy, but just as we were going into a corner he panicked and locked his brakes up... and he crashed hard, but luckily for him into the grass beside the road (See the guy in the green shorts beside me in the pic? It was him.).

As I got to the bottom of the mountain I caught up to a group of people, as I figured I would, and rode right through them and continued on, feeling pretty good. And then came the last, grueling climb of the race. Five miles straight up to the finish line. It was sooo hard, but from somewhere I got a second wind of sorts and I actually caught a few more riders going up the climb and dropped them. And then there was one last rider in my crosshairs but he wasn't going to let me take him. He kicked it up and made it a race to the line. I couldn't match his acceleration and started to cramp up, even down to my toes. He got the better of me by thirty seconds in the end.

When the dust from this race settled, I wound up in 15th place. I believe that with the way I was feeling physically, I could have done a little better if it wasn't for my dizzy spell, though as a non-climber I didn't have any grand illusions of a podium finish in this race. Overall I had a good race and a great time! (And a "very nice job" to my team mate Kirk Morrison for his 8th place finish in his group at the race!)