Ready to Race

This season’s training has been good, but tough. Getting older makes you wonder if you can still make the magic happen on the racecourse. I’m excited because all the explosive power work and strength work from the past couple of months is paying off. Going into the race season, I feel ready for flight and I’m sure I can do some fast racing again this year!

My first big season goal is to help Team Topeak-Ergon win the 2017 Cape Epic. Kristian Hynek and Alban Lakata will lead the charge, and I will race with Erik Kleinhans as the super support team.

In order to arrive at the Cape Epic more prepared than ever before, my team will spend several early-season weeks together training in South Africa.

This “Cape Camp” starts with Grabouw, Race #1 of the South African Marathon Series. This race happens to take place on one of the Cape Epic courses, so it’s a great opportunity for us to scout it out.  Next we will do some summer training and recon the other courses. Being on the course gives us a chance to get a feel for the terrain, the layout and imagine how the racing could play out given the conditions. The sand, heat, hike-a-bikes, and leg-crushing climbs all hold surprises. The raw landscape presents hazards that can cause mechanicals and has the potential to cause race-ending crashes!  This homework should pay off and make the difference in taming the Cape Epic beast… or at least appeasing it!

My home base for the next several weeks will be Stellenbosch’s relaxing Ride In. It’s a place I’m familiar with, as our team’s home-away-from-home when we convene for the Cape Epic. It’s a great base of operations, as a ride center and with a nice coffee spot.

If I have an odd day off, I’d like to go fishing for shark or help with some local trail work, but I have a hunch we will be pretty busy on the bikes if we do it right!

Toward the end of this trip, our final test will be the Tankwa Trek Stage Race. Competing in this race will assure we have all the wrinkles ironed out and that we are working together as a well-oiled machine.

Afterward Tankwa Trek, I will come home for a few weeks. I’ll tune up the top-end of my fitness, and look forward to racing Virginia’s Monster Cross, before returning to South Africa to take on the Cape Epic.

Topeak-Ergon: Back to Baja

Beyond expectations lies the Mexico you don’t know! For my recent trip, I invited some of my good friends – SoCal racer Stefano Barberi and United Airlines senior pilot Marty Neary – to join me. I knew they would be blown away by the friendly people, the wild adventure and the amazing terrain.

After you get over the initial contrast that lies between San Diego and Tijuana and head down the vast wild coast things change. Aqua marine sea, islands and tan brown mountains make up a postcard scene. The bustling coastal city is full of Latin colors and character. This place, however, is more than that. You can tell you have arrived at a cycling hotspot. There are 1.5-meter rule signs on roads and cyclists buzzing around in team kits both day and night!

The second we arrived at the bike shop, we were greeted by Jorge Truilo the man behind the legendary race Baja 100k. He just opened his third bike shop and is a driving force behind the riding culture that is taking Ensenada by storm.

Hugs, handshakes, and fist bumps abound. I grabbed some selfies with eager members of the women’s bike club that assembled at the VIP dinner party. The party was catered by Jorges’s mama and papa, with lobster tails, Mexican style beans, flash-fried tortillas with home made salsas and some sort of tasty cream pasta. They topped it off with local microbrew beers and we kicked back and relaxed after the big travel day. Dulce Vida!

The new 5000-square foot bike shop puts most US shops to shame with its layout. The high-end inventory and picture-window bike displays featured the amazing Rampage Trail and the remote inland roads. There was an organized service area that had a squeaky clean and tool-free workbench. As a former mechanic, I know this is not usual, but rather the sign of truly professional mechanic.

The press conference we participated in was like that you’d see before a big rally car race: with the mayor, top international riders, TV, newspaper reporters and podium girls making for a full spectacle.

The night before the mountain bike race, we found great burger, listened to bumping house music and watched the stage announcer pumping up the spectators that watched the 5k running race that was taking place.

The next morning it was our turn. The start felt hectic with the TV helicopter swarming overhead. After the police-lead rollout, we hit the first mammoth climb with the $500 KOM at the top! I was ridding strong in second place, chasing star rider Hector Paez of the Italian Team Olympia that had sent three riders. Then I punctured and my CO2 hissed out a cloud of smoke. I stood there for a while thinking I was done for the day! Due to kindness of the neutral support and other racers, I was able to fight my way back up even overcoming a frustrating second flat!

Now because I was so far back, I was riding to enjoy it. The goal was to finish strong and to shred some trail. I was pushing hard for the simple pleasure of seeing how much I could nail the final climbs.

In the past few weeks, I’d missed several races because a knee-injuring crash. Being able to ride strong and push hard, made the feeling its own reward. Better yet, I was able to look around and enjoy the amazing vistas of the wild mountains layered next to a vast blue sea. The Rampage Trail was a descent down a fin of the mountain with an exposed 1,000-feet drop on either side and at times is as narrow as a skills park balance beam! The trail feels like you’re riding down the spine of giant dinosaur. It was damn cool.

The new section they introduced this year stunned me with its desert wildness. Sculpture-like giant boulders lined the small valley and blooming cactus decorated the trail as it weaved through the rocks and onto a half-track narrow benched section. It was really fun!

Post-race I was approached by a lot of fans, had a few cold beers pushed my way, and even held a baby for a picture. The bumping techno, beer garden and coastal venue was the stage for a fantastic time.

We got a good lead to head to the Mercado Negro for fish tacos. It was like a fish market out of a book: fish of every type staked in huge piles next to crabs, clams, octopus and more! We sat drinking margaritas, listening to a mariachi quartet and eating marlin tacos that words will never suffice to explain their splendor. Marty found a fine Cuban cigar and Stefano and I ate macaroon-covered ice cream while laughing about the funny stories of our day. Good times.

We enjoyed the awards, but had to head to the airport because of a super-early flight the next morning. After taking a couple of wrong turns in Tijuana, we approached the U.S. border. Just when I thought the adventure was over, we were selected for what seemed like a random screening by border patrol. In reality Marty’s ID scan revealed a warrant with his name on it from Ottawa Canada! As he was interrogated and finger printed inside the station Stefano and I looked at each other in disbelief. Like, holy shit, this ain’t looking good. After a while they all came out smiling and chatting and our ordeal came to a close. It turns our there is some dude on the loose with the same name and description. They had the wrong guy, but that added a bit of excitement to our already wild trip!

After two years racing in Baja, I thought I knew how this trip would go, but it was my best yet. Not because of my modest 5th place but because finish, but because I brought friends and they loved it. We all won the adventure of the unexpected!

I can’t wait to go back already!
– Jeremiah Bishop
Team Topeak-Ergon

2016 World Marathon Championships – Laissac, France

The Friday before our big race, the United Kingdom announced its awkward exit from the European Union. Markets and currency have been roiled ever since, and even solidarity among the UK has taken a hit with Scotland possibly considering another vote on secession, threatening to plunge England into a serious salmon shortage.

All the while Team Topeak Ergon was working together on our final preparations for the World Championships in the sunny mid-Pyrenean town of Laissac, France. Bikes were sparkling and riders were all in our leanest meanest shape.

At Cross Country World Championships, riders on the top industry teams will often house together and use the technical support they are accustomed too year-round, instead of the generic cobbled-together ad hoc support provided by some of the national teams; and such was our arrangement.

I suppose I have gotten used too the multi-national composition of my team’s riders and staff. To see each rider, if only for a day, wearing their national team colors was a reminder that our crew is like the cast of the starship Enterprise. We are one global team that works together, though each of us has our own views, style and homeland.

In my earliest experiences racing internationally, the volley of languages was confusing and overwhelming, but now 15 years in, I have come to enjoy the colorful expressions and can even follow some conversations in German, Spanish and French. My teammate Kristian and mechanic Gio are from Czech Republic; another teammate Alban and lead tech Peter are from Austria; teammate Sally and team director David are from Great Britain; Torsten and team manager Dirk are from Germany; and soigneur Craig and teannate Erik are from South Africa; so our mix is especially interesting.

Marathon Worlds was different than the typical stage race team format; we were given instructions that we couldn’t help each other during the race and were to just race for ourselves. After months of working together, this was kind of weird.

World Championships was made exceptionally hard for Erik and me: we’d not done any of the 2016 Marathon Series races which determined the start line call-up order. This odd ruling made it almost comical, as superstar riders like Kulhavey, Gustaf Larson (silver medalist at the Olympics for TT) Howard Grotts, Todd Wells, Kali Freiburg and Lucas Fluckinger all got placed in the back of the 150-rider field!

Start gun goes BANG and there was a nasty crash on the left bringing my side of the lineup to a screeching halt. I stood one foot on the pavement and saw the two riders inspecting their mangled bikes; one just walks backward to call it a day. I clipped into my pedals, now almost last place, and started my sprint to catch the back of the peloton. Another bungle in the group on the first dirt and I’d gotten back to my starting position. I hooked up with Wells and Grotts in the left side of the dirt straightaway hitting near 50 kph and dust swirling. I managed to pass a couple of riders, putting me in 125th position. Grotts punched it on the first climb and made a move surging forward, Todd and I struggled pass a few riders at a time. I made some stealthily cross country moves late in the racel; braking and diving into the transitions taking some risks! What a pump.

I felt the pipes open and throttled the climbs, but then traffic came to a standstill; riders were walking on the cavernous Ruta climb. We hit the first feed zone and I had sprinted and slammed on my brakes about 30 times and caught riders in the top-80. The leaders were long gone some 4.5 minutes ahead already.

We hit the biggest climb and I pushed as best as I could, hoping to recover from my first 90 minutes of all out riding. I had no choice but to ride like this to jump on the train before it totally left the station.

By Feed Zone 2 I had caught Carl Platt, Urs Huber, a German, a Polish rider, a Spanish rider, and an Italian. We worked as a group moving fast. Then the screech of branch and scratch of locked tired on grave Karl was walking from his bike having hit the deck hard! We raced on, the rest was brief then I knew I’d have to go full tilt the last 2 hours to make any further ground. Then, after all that work making my way up to 50th(?), my rear tire went soft. I limped slowly down a hill or two knowing if I made it to the tech zone that was 6 kilometers ahead, I’d get a wheel. After my change, I really moved to catch my new group I’d come accustomed to riding in. On the way, I passed Martinez who, despite many years of doping, is still allowed to represent France – such class, unbelievable.

It was a battle out there and my legs started to tighten as I hit the 2000-meters of climbing mark! I still had 2 hours and 1,500 meters of climbing left but was passing one rider every 10 minutes or so. By the final section of technical trail I passed Tim Boem and linked up with a past winner of Andalucía Bike Race.

Dropping the descent, I had the surge I needed! I was flying the last 40 minutes and made 5 more passes to finish 23rd. More than the result, I’ll remember the chants of “U-S-A!” and the thrill of the chase. The feeing of racing high-caliber riders all day and feeling strong; surfing through loamy turns and blasting through the streams. It was so damn hard, but it was really fun.

At the finish, I had to ask how my teammates did; I knew our team captain Alban wouldn’t be happy with his seond place; he’d won last year and his late-race surge came up only 19 seconds short, while Tiago Ferreira had won. Our teammate Kristian took the bronze medal. (Paez crashed and broke his bar a two-up duel in the final decent.) Sally brought home a shiny silver medal in the women’s event, and Erik set a new PR with his 29th place finish.

All told, we had a good week: we worked hard, trained together, and enjoyed some wine and good food.

The individual nationalities of the riders were splashes of color. We respect each other’s differences, but this union is a lot tighter than the EU – we are Team Topeak Ergon!

Brexit aside, the global trend is acceptance and respect among nations. If each of us works hard and has some understanding of our differences, while charting strong leadership, we can work together toward peace, prosperity and liberty… and still proudly display our different national jerseys now and then.

Getting a Taste of Local Customs

Here in Kayamandi, South Africa pre-riding the MTO Songo Champions Race and was waved down by some of the local kids whose neighborhood the route passes through. They beckoned me over to check out the “smilies” that were being prepared on a grill nearby.

Check ’em out in the video above.

Also had time to catch up with Christoph Sauser and ask him to share a bit about Songo.info:

Songo.info is a social development program that provides sport and recreational activities to children, offering a safe place to play and grow, establishing values of accountability and responsibility, teaching goal setting and instilling in children the ability to dream and go out and achieve their goals.

More info about the Champions Race is here, and for more info about Songo.info follow this link.

Race Alchemy

[Alchemy: A medieval magic concerned primarily of turning base metals into gold.]

When I found out that the Leadville Trail 100 was an obligatory team race, I was not exactly excited.

Its lack of prize money is one thing, but the previous LT100 races I’d done were about as painful and mind numbing as doing a six and a half hour wall-sit with while huffing through a dirty paper bag.

I love a good challenge; especially the trill sound of wheels clanking on rocks and experiencing the roller coaster G’s of finely-tuned single track peppered with berms. Slicing and dicing along single track; these are thing things I’m stoked to do. It’s races like the Breck Epic that bring a big smile to my face.

So I waxed philosophical about the Leadville race. ‘Maybe I’ll just think of it as a road race on a rough course?’

Eureka! Bringing a new narrative to the same old race this was the key to motivate and get the best out of my teammates and myself.

Leaville 100 is a dirt road out-and-back course at 10,000+ feet average elevation that climbs to 12,300 feet at the halfway point then returns through a flattish valley and finishes with two tough climbs. Since it’s dirt roads are constant, it’s one of the few iconic races in mountain biking that has an unchangeable course – and therefore a course record.

In 2013, my Topeak-Ergon teammate Alban Lakata smashed Levi Leipheimer’s course record by 10 minutes, An unreal time of 6:04:00 was set (The LT100 is actually 103.5 miles, and features 11,000 feet of climbing through dizzying altitudes so the speed need is 17 mph ) In that race, the reigning world champion at the time, Christopher Sauser, and Alban ( Reigning and former world champion) waged a battle of epic proportions! How could anyone go faster than that? Those guys had a dog fight right to the end. Their intense rivalry propelled them 24-minutes ahead of even Lance Armstrong’s finishing time on the course in a previous year!

Fast forward to 2015, while our team was enjoying a pizza at the end of a tough TransAlp Challenge: thinking ahead to the LT100, the gears in my head turned. I said to Alban, “a sub-6 hour is possible; it’s only four minutes!” Alban and I, with our teammate Kristian “The Hammer” Hynek, could work together on the extensive flat dirt road sections and paceline into the headwinds to slice seconds off the winning splits from 2013.

The goal crystalized. The coach/scientist in my head began running scenarios of how this might work out.

Historically, the LT100 lead-group blasts it to pieces on the monster hour-long climb to Columbine Mine at 12,300 feet. Then, on the way back it’s like a solo time-trial across the valley – often into the wind.

It’s metabolically reaching the physiological limits to ride more than 1,000 Kilojoules per hour for more than 6 hours while hypoxic and only 75% of normal sea level oxygen. Hitting the climbs at anaerobic threshold causes a metabolic shift to approximately 90% glycogen fueling. What this means is: if you ride really hard on the climbs, you will empty the tank after five hours and suffer pins and needles numbness in your arms legs, searing pain and a general bonking sensation. Kristian experienced this while leading the LT100 race by six minutes last year.

A few clever aerodynamic tricks combined with the team strategy of sticking together should enable us to split the workload and unlock the key 5-minute split lead needed before the grueling final 20 miles.

With our team’s goal firmly in place and a strategy to support it, the Leadville Trail 100 starting shotgun blasted off just before sunrise. I went to the front and pushed the pace, helping cut some easy seconds off our normally brisk pace of 40k an hour to St Kevin’s (our first checkpoint along the course).

I hit the first climb and knew the 10 previous days I had spent at altitude had paid off!  At the top we had a 1-minute advantage on the ghost pace of 2013.

A big lead group split off from the main field, including all the contenders: Todd Wells, Alban Lakata, Kristian Heinik, Christoph Sauser, Soren Nissen and me.

Todd flatted and our group shrank. Alban moved into a super-tuck and dive-bombed the paved downhill; leaning through blind corners like a motorcycle.

Once at the bottom, I rolled to the front and got to work leaning on the mini aerobars I’d been testing in secret. We were moving; already 90seconds up on our time splits by mile 16. Game on!

After a blistering climb up Sugar Loaf, we rocketed through the early morning shadows of the dusty sidehill descent of Powerline. I could see the dust swirl and the ruts – big enough in places to eat a VW bug. It could be the end of your season if you took the wrong line.

BING!

I heard my rim, and felt it bottom-out on a rock at near 40 mph. I thought I’d flat, but didn’t.

Our group reassembled at the bottom, as we hit the main flat pavement and dirt road trip out to Twin Lakes. It was time to fuel.

Our group was working well and I made use of the aerobars where they’d be best on the headwind or flats.  Alban was obviously motivated by the 3-minutes ahead of record that we posted by the pipeline aid station. His large frame was steady as his tan muscled legs churned out gothic watts on the front. ‘The rainbow jersey is on his back for a reason,’ I thought.

It would have been risky for him to work so hard on pace making, since we had Christopher Sauser in tow, and since we only had him doing courtesy pulls, it was hard to gauge what he might be saving. Kristian also pulled through, but eventually the two would battle it out on the last climb.

Columbine hurt. I was feeling the 45 miles of world record pace setting. Kristian drove the pace at the front and Sauser and Nissen started falling off. I could’t help it but I thought of the extra pound clamped to my bars as the difference between getting dropped from our trian and being comfortable. I buckled down like the race had only this one climb left.

As we reached tree line, something magic happened: I found my alpine groove and was holding strong with the top-two marathon riders in the world. My time on the climb even tied for second fastest recorded on Strava.

As we made our way up, there was an almost-tribal breathing rhythm. Trying to turn the cranks, I could feel the ghostly thin wind and hear it wheezing through the spokes.

The descent gave us a look back on the competition, since the whole course is an out-and-back.

As usual, this kamikaze decent down and against oncoming race traffic is a Russian roulette; with zombie riders weaving their ways up the climb. Many of the racers cheered for us; and that part is really cool. Not cool was trying to follow Sauser as he enduro’d his way back to the lead group.

Phew, made it! My legs were feeling heavy though. On one section, Alban ran into a lady who had bobbled trying to climb up a step section, almost ending his day.

We synchronized and locked into a paceline again. I took some good turns at the front and fought against the threat of legs straining underneath 70 miles of sub-6-hour pace! As we approached the base of Powerline, it looked like we were 5 minutes up on the record pace. “No way I thought”, this will be close!

As the last climb approached, and working to slice seconds off every place I could, I took a final big pull at the front. The others refused to pull hard into the wind, but Alban lead into the base of the climb like a Spartan would.

Now that it was man against the mountain, I could tell Kristian had plans and he lit it up! I had to measure my effort, and lost a little time to Alban who lost a little time to Christian. I was dropping Sauser and Nissen and my legs were feeling surprisingly strong.

Halfway up, it seemed evident that Kristian would have two minutes lead on Alban and three minutes on me by the summit of power line’s nasty half hour climb. To my surprise, Sauser came back like a storm. He was dropping the rock-strewn Jeep trail descent with the reckless speed one might use during his final LT100.

I hung on! We hit the dirt road and could see Alban some 40 seconds ahead!

Sauser asked me to pull through on the smooth 50kph section. ‘No way, I’m not chasing a teammate.’ It would be dangerous if Sauser latched on to Alban. I just hoped Alban had enough left to hold his gap. He did and then came to life as the final 10 miles hit. Making eye contact with Kristian some 90 seconds ahead on the final climb, he put on the turbos; overtaking a now-cracked Kristian in the final 200 meters to win in a historic sub-6-hour time of 5:58:38!

Just out of sight, I was blasting the final climb in an all-out-attempt to go sub-six myself. I had looked to the clock at 6k to go, and realized I was 5:45:00 in. It was SO close to the finish. I said to Sauser, ‘I don’t care about the sprint, I just want my best time!’ I put my head down and drove it.

 

At the finish line we sprinted. I got pipped at the line – as expected – but, hey, 6:01:01 is an unbelievable time.

The pride of working together as a team for an epic goal was like the magic of turning lead into gold!

This is my account, for the full story and behind the scenes look at the Topeak-Ergon Racing Team assault on the sub-6-hour record at the LT100, check out our our videos, interviews and images from living the legend, beyond limits.

– Jeremiah Bishop
Team Topeak Ergon