2013 Tree Farm Relay - Battle of the Beards

Dozer, Diesel, Dub-9 and Pain Train.  In 2011 as The Motor Club they took 2nd with a time of 5:54:53.  In 2012 as Hellcats they tore through the course 6 minutes faster collectively taking 4th with the race clock ticking them at 5:48:59 and that was with a 5 min layover from A-Train's crash.  This year, returning as The Hellcats, the team hauled ass and knocked another 16 minutes of their time from 2012 coming in at 5:33:02.  However, the entire race field has gotten so much stronger that their time was only good enough for 5th place.  Being 22 minutes faster than two years ago and sliding three places down the podium is hard to swallow but it's great news for such an outstanding event.

But . . . there was something larger at stake this year than a podium finish.  Something that the world had never seen or heard of before....well at least not in this race.  THE GOLDEN HAMMER!

KLM/Coldstone Racing, Cycletherapy, Racing Greyhounds, Power Hounds, The Cutters, Corktown Racers, The Most Interesting Team in the World, all the other teams......they all didn't matter anymore.  The Hellcats were now racing each other for the right to lift the Golden Hammer at the end of the day.  Whoever hammered out  the fastest lap of the day earned their place in history as keeper of the Golden Hammer.  Would it Be Jeremy 'The Dozer' Daum who is always willing to put it all on the line and fight to the last drop of blood for the team?  Or how about Brian 'The Diesel' McCabe who can match laps with the best of them no matter what man, beast or alien intelligence he comes across?  Then there's the calm, quiet, tame, always keeping to himself Jon 'Dub9' Somethingorother who has been slaying the Motor Club riders at every race this year.  And last, the sealant in the team's tires that keeps this group rolling forward, the man that keeps his cool on the trail at all times, Aryn 'The Bike Whisperer' Pongratz.  Who would be the last man standing in the center of the ring?

Lap 1 of 8 . . . oh who the hell cares with race details!

After a five and a half hour long battle it came down to the last lap to determine the winner of the Golden Hammer.  The Diesel was the victor besting A-Train's fastest 10 mile lap by 59 seconds with the time of 40:01.

Now for race day pictures!!!

Nope, not post race.  This happened at 8:30am

8:45am

Jeremy talking to Jon about his posture before the race

A visit from Jay The Hammer himself!!!

Jon practicing his descents with thoughts of the Golden Hammer

The Diesel going out for his 1st lap of the day

Free in camp tattoos for Hellcat riders

A-Train new ink

Dozer catapulting into his second lap

Out of a plastic up?  Uh, okay!

Jon coming in to finish the team's 7th 10 mile lap

Who needs a plastic cup?

Noon

Hellcats good friend John Heft auditioning for the upcoming sequel to Dances With Wolves

Happy to be working on some one else's bike other than his wife's

A-Train bringing finishing the team's 8th and final lap

Post race with Jay The Hammer

(more race photos)

We have tons of other photos, some of which should not be shared publicly.  But if you have time to waste, check out Hans Nyberg's 500 pix slide show of the race.  It's worth the time spent.

http://tenmilemedia.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Bike/2013-Tree-Farm-Relay/30790308_XXFN9d#!i=2662748376&k=SDrcmBs

And of course we'd like to thank Team Tree Farm, The Hella Bellas, Spoke Drunkies, The Dark Horse Ladies, MTB Patrol and all the others who made this event possible AGAIN!  We're already planning for next year!

The team is in recovery mode because in 6 days they head north to Manistee National Forest for stop number #7 of the USAC Tailwinds series at Big M.

Block's way or The Highway

With A-Train away on important team business, Diesel not remembering who he was for a week and Soze out doing something some where he is not supposed to, that left Block to be Lone Wolf for the day at the Brighton XC.  Fortunately it was a nice sunny day so he couldn't complain about being sick with any sickness.  Unfortunately, he didn't have a cool Lone Wolf jacket like Lenny from Laverne and Shirley.  However, he did manage to talk Lady Block into coming to help support him for the day along with one of his offspring.

As usual, Block (this time with family) Roved in about 11:30 and set up some chairs inside the parade lap.  He noticed Mrs. Dub9 standing around looking pretty and went and asked how Jon was doing.  She said Jon was in third and should be finishing shortly as the course length was trimmed down for unknown reasons.  Block knew Jon finishing third meant Jon would be crabby.  But the short course sounded promising, as being in recovery from his ailment, the shorter the better.  Block really just needed a somewhat solid finish to keep moving towards his third in the overall Beginner series.

Mrs Lady Block

Jon came through and after debriefing with Lako, he gave the Big Block some reconnaissance.  Said Dubble Cheese, "First, they took out about a mile of technical stuff.  Don't know what the hell that's all about.  Second, you should pre-ride the chatter bumps on the road as they take some getting used to.  Third, try to be first going into the single track due to the lack of passing areas.  Aryn is stupid and doesn't know what he is talking about.  I am faster than him now so you should be listening to me....all the time"

Given his recent bought with the plague, Block didn’t bring the rollers so he went off down the road and messed with the chatter bumps.  Sounds kinda hot if you take that out of context.  He was glad Jon told him about those as it did take a little getting used to.  After losing interest in the hot bumps, he aborted further warm up to conserve strength.  He thought about staying and watching the hot girls play volleyball in bikinis by the bathroom but instead pedaled back to the start gate.  Eight riders were lined up and all had team jerseys on, so no khaki shorts and polo shirt guys in the race today.  Three of the group were on some Canadian Xpress Team.  They had done Bloomer as well.  Block noticed Sandy Gaulin was there from Flying Rhino so first place was off the table.

Block going in for the draft

Block lined up next to Sandy Claws and at the start followed his wheel all the way to the single track.  He said after that pre-pneumonia this effort would have been a 140 hr Zone 2 effort but now it was a 178 over the limit effort.  He tried to hang onto Sandy but he slowly pulled away. When he got to the steep rise around mile 2, he plowed into the same root that had previously stopped him in the past and this time was no different.  He unclipped and managed to not fall but got passed by the two guys.  After that he just tried to ride within his limits and manage his HR.  He said felt like he was going really slow and ended up having several other guys pass him so he figured I had dropped to 7th.  Coming out of lap one, he was hoping for a 35 min split on the clock but was horrified to see a 50.  He felt like pulling over and calling it a day.

At that point the Big Fella said he reassessed his goals:
1) Finish- as any place in the small group would be decent points for the series
2) Don’t be an Aryn and take last.
3) Don’t hit that root on this lap.
4)     Maybe I should just go watch that volleyball game

So he just continued at his pace and ended up holding his ground, only getting passed by a couple of sport guys at the very end that were lapping him.  Block said he felt like he had zero leg strength but interestingly, it actually helped him learn to ride his bike better.  He now put more effort into trying to carry speed through turns and dips since he knew I didn’t have much strength.  (this is where he finally started to stop being a roadie)  He also noticed how much better the bike rolled without the rear brake on....maybe Aryn isn't really stupid.  Slow, but not stupid.

At the finish, the clock read 90 and at first he was confused to have been 10 minutes faster on lap 2 but then realized he was the one that was stupid and forgot that his wave started 13 minutes after the first wave so his first lap was a 37, not a 50.

As Block sat with Lady Block recovering, he saw a couple of the Xpress guys finish and then realized that a couple of the guys that passed him must have been in the 50-59 wave so I was probably in 5th not 7th.  PODIUM!  That gives him two 3rd place and two 5th place finishes so far for the series.  Not bad for a roadie....who doesn't shave his legs.

Block making the Sponsors happy

Into the Bloomer Butter they go

Last weekend we sent the worker ants out to Bloomer Park in Rochester for local Tailwind XC.  It had rained on and off for close to two weeks leading up to this race....more on than off it seemed.  The day before the race it was posted that the normal race course would need some reroutes so the trail would not turn into the DMZ.  Diesel arrived pretty early and put it in park next to fellow Twin Six'er JD9.  A-Pong showed up a few minutes later and flanked Diesel on the other side to form a nice 3 vehicle Motor Pool that would serve as camp for the day.  No sense in setting up the tent as there were no groupies, media, medics or small farm animals traveling with the band this day.  Everyone was in self help mode.

The morning seemed to take longer than usual to get to race time even after Dubs did a perimeter search, Diesel checked out the latrine and Pogo stayed at camp to take inventory and check ammo supply.  The scouting report came back fairly normal with only a couple small concerns and after a warm up and pre ride of some of the course the Motor Bugs were ready to roll out.

Pong and Dubs made their way over to the front lines and stood in formation with Osgood, Lakomoto and Klienglass.  RA was also there along with a couple others.  The roll call numbers were low but the pack was strong.  Pongo went into the woods at P7 right behind Seth and in the end made up one spot to grab 6th place.  Said he after the race: "This course suits my strengths for sure.  Tight twisty single track with only a small handful of long open flats for power riders to pull away from me.  Plus with Tailwind having to cut some sections out and do some reroutes it kept the course length closer to 2 hours which is my ceiling right now for XC.  So I was able to finish strong instead of limping across the line like I did at Addison.  Overall a great race and it's always fun to hear about  everyone's battles after the race.  My splits were solid and other than missing a turn on lap one and having to dismount and run thru the mud to get back on course I had a fairly clean race in terms of strategy.  The course had it's fair share of grease and mud tho!"

Pongoloco coming down the ravine

Diesel was up next and he had plans for the day.  The course suited him very well too so he was looking to do some damage.  Unfortunately, there was a foreign ringer in his class that put a smack down on the guys who usually win his class and also two other Elite riders CAT-ed down to his class so he was in for a tough fight.  From the Diesel himself: "I went out the first lap trying to hang onto the end of the podium.  But closer to the end of lap one I decided my garmin was right and I couldn't spend the entire 2 hours in zone five.  Shortly after that the group I was in missed the turn at the cart path and we went about a minute off course before we realized we needed to turn around and head back to the race that was going on.  What makes it bad is that I pre rode that section with Dub-9 and I still misread it.  Dumb dumb mistake but in the end I finished in 6th place about 5 minutes behind the guy in front of me so even if I wouldn't have missed that turn the podium was out of reach today.  Other than that it was a pretty solid race for me and I left it all out there."

Diesel in Z5 mode

And since Block and Soze weren't there a MOTOR jersey never made it to the podium.  But once again our fellow Twin Six bunkie, Jon W(hatever) Polish METAL Guy took 3rd and had a seat on the podium making him 5 for 5 this year with podium appearances.

Jon DoUBle Cheeseburger playing in the mud

Lakomoto survived another sprint finish to take the #1 spot.  Osgood fought the mid season demons for a day and held on to 5th place while our man Marc Zac took a 6th in his SS field as well.

One of the fan favorites, J-O, out in the weeds

Next up, Brighton XC on July 13th.  Be there or be square.