The Angry Singlespeeder: Singletrack Summer Camp
I got my very first mountain bike at age 13. It was a fire engine red Giant Rincon. I beat the piss out of that bike exploring fire roads, horse trails and hiking paths all over my neighborhood in suburban Pittsburgh. My first mountain bike race was during the hallowed “Month of Mud”series, a series that fully lived up to its name.
To this day I still can’t remember a mountain bike race that was more disastrous to bike and body than the Month of Mud. Running through a half-frozen swamp in 25 degree temperatures and four inches of snow on the ground with nothing more than some ragged tennis shoes, worn out running tights and a sweatshirt was a recipe for frostbite and hypothermia, but when you’re 15 years old, youth and stupidity are your allies. There’s nothing like getting thrown into the deep end of the pool, which is probably why I easily persevered in the brutal conditions of the recent Whiskey Off-Road. Prescott ain’t got nothing on Pittsburgh when it comes to inclement weather.
In 1995 I graduated high school and left Pennsylvania. I haven’t done a mountain bike race there since. It’s not that I’ve avoided going back, quite the contrary. I loved riding and racing in PA. The jagged rocks, slippery roots, paralyzing mud, dense forest and hundreds of miles of singletrack made for unforgettable adventures. It’s just that life moved on, I moved west and never bothered to come back.
Well this month all of that’s gonna change. After spending a few days in Asheville, North Carolina riding the legendary trails of Pisgah National Forest and visiting the folks at Cane Creek, Industry Nine and Endless Bike Co., I’ll be enrolling in what’s quickly becoming known as “singletrack summer camp”.
Last summer during the Breck Epic—the hardest and most rewarding event I’ve ever done on a bicycle—my roomie and fellow singlespeed scribe, Rich “Dicky” Dillen, recommended I check out the Trans-Sylvania Epic in State College, PA. He waxed poetic on the technical trails, summer camp atmosphere and boisterous shenanigans that went on each afternoon. The Breck Epic is amazing, but it’s amazingly hard on the body due to the 10,000-foot base elevation of Breckenridge. At the end of each four-hour day, all you want to do is go back to your room, eat everything in your path like Pac-Man and then pass out dead until the next morning.
Not so with the TS Epic, said Dicky. Although technically challenging, the TS Epic doesn’t blow you to bits, leaving some gas in the tank afterward for co-mingling and taking part in aforementioned shenanigans. Plus it’s set dead center in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, a place that molded my mountain biking skills as a teenager. Sign me up.
Continue to Page 2 for more on the Trans-Sylvania Epic and full photo gallery »
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