the first rendition from the doctor [02.17.03]

final thoughts from the doctor [02.19.03]

from jay's perspective [02.17.03]

first news in from the doctor [02.17.03]

The BORG Mountain Racing Team is soaking in hot tubs and basking in the joy and glory? of a 4th Place (we think) finish in the Corporate Category of the 24-Hour Old Pueblo Relay.

It seemed the consensus of all involved that the entire experience far exceeded any expectations, and was one of the most enjoyable and rewarding events any of us had participated in previously.

Since saddle-sores last longer than memories (at least for some of us), I wanted to record a few of my favorite observations and memories in the hopes it will be fun for those who were there, and stimulate the interest of those who weren’t.

First and foremost, everyone agreed that his dedication, enthusiasm, and consistent attention to detail made Travis Williams the All-Time best Team Manager. Our team operated like a well-oiled machine, making line-up changes with great flexibility, rising to each emergency challenge, and never losing a second in the mad house of the Transition Area at the end of each lap. Travis is principally responsible for how well we all fit together. It will take a team vote for us to decide whether he has to manage again next year, or whether he can hit the trail as a rider!

Second, I want to acknowledge the contributions of Tom D. and Ray W. They were the two responsible for our corporate sponsorship in the first place, yet sadly neither of them was able to ride on race day. Ray W had trained particularly hard up to the last day, but was so sick on Saturday that he couldn’t answer the bell. Tom D, recently off knee surgery, took cane in hand and gimped his way out to the BORG camp laden with pizza and a tree’s worth of firewood, and lent moral support (as well as a bright light) to the whole team.

Both of them were missed on the trail, and played a big role in our success.

Then the riders turned in so many heroic performances that the thought of them all simply runs together in a jumble…Rey Cordova getting us off to an OUTSTANDING start with his sprint/ride on the first lap…Jon Martinez shaving 10 full minutes off of his best pre-ride time for the full course…David Swift giving up his first daytime slot to ride two night laps, cheerfully and without complaint (well, almost) “taking one” for the team…John Williams on his fresh “night-bike” catching air about 10 miles into his night lap and rearranging his saddle on the landing such that he could barely sit down, getting continually goosed the last 7 miles, yet still rode his fastest night lap yet…Tom Collins torqueing his chain on the rollers yet riding another 14 miles praying for it to hold together, and watching his front fork lose a cap and launch one of the inner springs out of the fork tube like a Polaris missile later on that same night lap…Jerry Livernois knocking the battery for his bar light off of its frame mount so that it dangled like a potential wrecking ball near his front wheel, and trying valiantly for several miles to grab the swinging battery before it could catch in his spokes. Failing that he simply yanked it free and hurled the battery and cable into a tree by the side of the trail (to be retrieved later), and continued on under headlight power…David Swift losing his light before the Slick Rock and riding it fearlessly in the dark, still burning a great lap time…Kirk Kornhoffer (whose dog “George” mercifully shut up every time Kirk rode a lap, leading several of us to suggest Kirk ride four consecutive night laps!) losing his light in the Arches parking lot and riding the power-line road, arguably the most treacherous stretch of the course in the dark, only to be met by John Williams at the top of the climb, who crowned Kirk with his “Full Bravo” helmet equipped with NiteRider HIV “Sunlight” so that Kirk could salvage his lap…Rey Cordova blasting through the final night lap so that he came into the Transition Tent in time to get John Williams out on the “sunrise” lap with Team BORG in First Place!…then with rumors of BORG’s first place standing just beginning to circulate among the crowd, John Williams calling in from the “Rollers” on the Hotline to report a broken chain, and that he had “forgotten” his chain tool. Not withstanding that it was the lamest excuse in the history of excuses, John valiantly, but unsuccessfully, tried to make repairs with a borrowed chain tool (thanks to Team 496!) while Rey Cordova raced out to the site of the breakdown to render assistance. Rey arrived saying that while he was just too wasted to ride another lap, he would give his chain, with “Quick Link” to John so that John could continue on. Then is a scene right out of “Two Stooges repair a bicycle chain”, despite John (Moe) issuing stern cautions, Rey (Curly) proceeded to misdirect the chain through the drive-train, while John stood by like a slow-thinking fencepost and dropped one half of the “Quick Link” into the gravel by the side of the trail. After a four-minute search through the dirt the Lord revealed the missing link, and Rey (Curly) connected the chain only to discover that it wasn’t through the front derailleur. The “Quick Link” was jammed, and had become a “Not-so-quick link”, but he managed to undo it, thread the chain and reconnect the link, only to have John (Moe) point out that the chain was not threaded correctly through the REAR derailleur. Rey gave it one last shot and declared victory in the great “chain war”, and John blasted off into the early morning with Team Borg’s first place hopes a distant memory…Jerry Livernois tried to make up for John’s gaff by courageously riding the last two miles of the following lap on a totally flat rear tire (one beer drinking bystander shouting, “it works better with AIR in it!”), and Tom Collins matched his determination by riding the last 1.5 miles of his following lap on an equally flat rear tire. (The judges penalized both riders on “style points” because neither of them had the huevos to ride the Slick Rock on only a back rim)…and finally Dave Swift kept excitement to a fever-pitch by leaving the Transition Area one minute behind the team we believed we were battling for second place, and rode the lap of his life (his third, mind you) with the constant encouragement of Rey Cordova who, though he had barely been able to walk back to camp after the “great chain rescue”, mounted up and rode an entire bonus lap to push Dave to the Max. (Reportedly “the doc” had started an IV drip on Rey when they both got back to camp and infused two Krispy Krème donuts directly into his veins, followed by one amp of apple cinnamon Carb Boom, and Rey was wired and ready to go again!). Dave finished in a screaming 1:12 on the final lap and was only three minutes from edging out our competition for a 3rd Place finish.

Lastly, was a comment overheard by BORG team members and unanimously voted as the quote of the event: One excited rider proudly blurted out to another that he had just ridden a 1:26 lap-time, only to have his friend reply, “hey cool, I think my Mom did a 1:26 lap too”!

I’m hoping others have their own favorite moments and memories to share, and will let us hear them from your own viewpoint.

I was delighted to be a part of the whole adventure and proud to ride for Team BORG. We did it in the right Spirit.

John “the doc” Williams

Final Thoughts on Team BORG’s participation in the 24-Hours in the Old Pueblo

After we crossed the Finish Line at the “24-Hours in the Old Pueblo” relay, I personally took “48-Hours Out of The Saddle” to recover. By yesterday afternoon my bikes were clean and repaired, my legs had stopped cramping spontaneously, my saddle sores were no longer screaming, and I even rode about 10 miles on 50-Year Trail with Team Manager Travis.

This morning I have time to form some “final thoughts” on the Team BORG experience.

There is apparently still question in many minds regarding the actual order of finish of the Corporate Teams. I had the strong impression that Team #405 (BOLLA) was First, Team #412 (HosieCows? I really don’t know about that name, and will gladly be corrected. It’s a little strange but I won’t poke fun at a bunch of guys that rode THAT FAST) was Second, and Team BORG was Third. The official results are at variance with my impression, but I must admit that perhaps because of my advanced age, I am not particularly concerned one way or the other.

As our Team Profiles indicate, I am far and away the “old man” on Team BORG and as some know, am on my second career as a bike rider. As a fairly strong road racer and individual time trial rider in the early 80s, where I FINISHED was of real importance to me; today the fact that I can even START seems such remarkable good fortune that the rest is gravy to me.

Perhaps for that reason my enduring impressions have more to do with the overall atmosphere of the Event, and the CHARACTER of my teammates, as well as my competitors.

Candidly, Team BORG was not composed of particularly fast riders. With the exception of young Rey Cordova, the six riders who rode one or more laps had best pre-ride times of between 1:18 and 1:45 for the racecourse. We never completed a training night-ride without multiple stops for mechanical failures or light loss. Oh we all took it seriously, especially after our initial Team Meeting BBQ back in January, but realistically Team BORG had no thoughts or illusions about a “podium finish”.

On the Thursday evening before the race I accompanied Rey C. out to Willow Springs where we established the Team Camp in a cold driving rain as we were enveloped in ink-black darkness. I told Rey it was the first of what my family referred to as great “bonding experiences”, and despite Rey’s sarcastic comment that he would much rather be bonding with his baby daughter Robin, I realized that it was the kind of moment from which the fabric of the event would actually be woven.

Camp itself was such a hoot! Team BORG trooped down to the Transition Area to welcome and exhort its riders for each new pass of the baton, then returned to our site to adjust bikes and swap stories of the previous lap. It didn’t take long to begin to realize that this was a group of guys who didn’t have “quit” in their vocabulary! Early on, Jerry L. told me how discouragingly wiped-out he felt toward the end of his first lap, but seemed to brighten somewhat when I pointed out that it was possibly because he had just ridden it faster (1:17) than ANY of his training laps! Lap after lap, regardless of what mishap occurred, BORG riders simply RODE ON.

Today I smile broadly to think of David Swift tearing through his second night lap as fast as his first (1:20), and modestly admitting that he had done the last few miles, including the Slick Rock, with NO LIGHT, and he HADN’T STOPPED! I shake my head over the memory of standing at 5:05am, with a light and battery in hand, at the top of the “power-line” road climb, and hearing (not seeing) Kirk Kornhoff ride out of the blackness having lost his light several miles earlier, but he HADN’T STOPPED!

On a night lap Tom Collins saw his front fork fly into pieces and his chain groaned from riding at a crazy angle over the chain-rings, but he HADN’T STOPPED! On mid-morning Sunday as we all waited near Slick Rock in great anticipation to see if Jerry L. could make up for my “broken chain” lap, we could hear (long before we could see him) the “kerthunka-wompa-kerthunka-wompa-kerthunka-wompa” as he slithered through the final part of the course on a ruptured back tire, but he HADN’T STOPPED! On the very next lap we saw Tom Collins weaving down the home stretch taking Jerry’s “no tire-pressure” approach on his own back wheel, but he HADN’T STOP!

I even laugh at myself, just a bit over halfway through lap #9, with my saddle now poking me straight in the butt. A quick mental calculation led to the conclusion that it would take more time (especially in the darkness) to correct the problem than it would cost to ride that way. I wonder now if the resulting “personal best” night-ride time wasn’t BECAUSE of the problem, rather than DESPITE it, and I HADN’T STOPPED!

And finally, the whole CHARACTER issue was capped off on our last lap! We knew Dave Swift left the Transition Area at virtually the same time that Team #412 sent their last rider out, and by all accounts their rider Steve had routinely turned laps 12 to 13 minutes faster than David’s typical time. Despite our good-natured banter back and forth at the Camp Site (where Team #412 was immediately next to Team BORG), it was obvious that Dave was out-gunned.

But Dave DIDN’T STOP! Indeed, in the company of Rey Cordova who arose from his hospital bed and mounted up a final time AMA (“Against Medical Advice”) to encourage Dave throughout the entire final lap, he ripped through our single fastest full lap time of the event (1:12) and pushed Steve far harder than I imagine he wanted to be pushed.

So for me these lessons in Character, and the “bonding experiences” that resulted are the enduring value of the 24-Hours in the Old Pueblo. I have real admiration for how gracious Team Bolla was throughout their winning effort, and for the amazing tenacity of Team #412 (HosieCow?) as they steadily clawed their way out of the early hole they were almost buried in. I take heart in the notion that an unknown rider from Team #496 stopped on the roller to leave me his chain tool (would I have done that for someone else?).

Sure, the finishing order is of interest to me, but of much more significance was the thrill and accomplishment of giving it my best effort along with a group of Teammates that just DIDN’T STOP!

---“doctor John” Williams

jay's viewpoint [02.17.03]

It was a lot of high drama on Sunday morning. Here is how it went down from our perspective:

On Saturday, our first rider out flatted about 3/4 of the way through. He repaired it and went on; with less than 2 miles to go he flatted again. He messed up his CO2 cartridge and found himself with no air. He did not bring a back up pump. He started walking and someone came by and loaned him a pump! He ended up about 15 minutes later than scheduled (which meant he had a good lap going until the problem). Our second rider off was pretty fast so even though we were already in a hole we thought we could take some time back. Our third rider is our fastest day rider. So we were not looking too bad. We are at the tent waiting for our 2nd guy; and waiting; and waiting; he is 20 minutes late; now 30; now 40. He did not take a cell phone with him as we had discussed at our pre-race meeting. So I take his wife's phone and start walking the course backwards seeing if he is coming in. I'm about a half mile out when this phone rings. Its our team mgr, Chris Carls and he says "Paul snapped off his derailer on the back side of the course (about the 5/8 lap mark). He is walking in. Come on back." A rider had come into the Start/Finish tent and told the scorer "Team 412 broke a derailer". The scorer told us to send our third guy off. But since we did not complete our 2nd lap or 3rd rider essentially became our second rider. He cranked off this awesome 1:05 lap but it went in the books as 2:56 lap and we were a lap down on the competition. Bummer. At that point we, as a team, were simply looking for a clean, no problem lap. Chris was our 4th rider off and he did an awesome 1:15 lap (in practice rides he had been doing 1:22-26s so it goes to show you that race day is a different story). Our entire team was never assembled at the campsite. Our third rider had to leave for Phoenix so he was basically good for one lap; two other guys were not available until the evening.

As we moved into the evening we were in like 10th-12th place. The last of our riders showed up about 8:30p. Steve was his name. He is an experienced 24 hour rider. He noticed that we were all kind of down and he said "what are you guys talking about? We can make this lap up. In 24 hour racing it is all about the night. Whoever does well at night is usually on the podium the next day." Well that pumped some people up. Got the competitive fires going and we just became this intensely focus group.

In the mean time, our rider with the broken derailer had returned to camp. He was scheduled for 3 laps. He walked over to the Oro Valley Bicycle tent and asked if they had a spare derailer. They said no but they called down to the shop and told the Saturday Guy to pull one from a new bike. Our guy hopped into his truck and sped like the proverbial bat out of heck down to the bike shop before they closed at 5pm. He made it back with a repaired bike in time for his night lap.

So most of the night we were able to click off clean laps, most of them were sub 1:20s as the guys really focused, basically putting in day lap times at night. A lot of the guys were breaking off personal best times for night rides. Slowly we began to rise up the leader board.

Of course, the night was not totally clean - one of our guys hit a big cholla full-on. Apparently he was cruising this fast single-track section of the course, beginning to relax and forgot about a tight turn coming up. He had his hands on the bar ends and when he realized the turn was tight he could not get to his brakes soon enough. He said the cactus just exploded. The guy behind him thought he was dead. The guy stopped and help him pull enough cholla balls out of his neck, back, arm, and butt so that he could ride his bike. He was nails - he got back on his bike and stomped on the gas and still turned a 1:19 with thorns. We he got back to camp I spent about 40 minutes pulling thorns out of him with tweezers. Some of the thorns were so deep - 1/16" sticking out, over 1/2" into his body. Yikes. We had another guy kind of bonk during both his laps on the course and limp in with a 1:30+ times. He was scheduled for 3 laps, his last being in the morning. But after his 2nd he decided he could not go again. Most of us were scheduled for 2 laps each, one day , one night, and if things went well we had a couple of guys that were going to do 3 laps. Well, we had a guy leave for Phx, and everyone else had already done their 2 laps and had mentally checked out. Some were already having a celebration beverage. So we moved the two riders that were slated next up a slot and sat around the camp fire discussing who was going to take a third while our 6:30am rider was out on the course.

Also, at this point we realized that we had moved into 4th place. The leader board was showing BORG and a team named Bolla jumping back and forth between 1st and 2nd, another team in third and us. The adrenaline was starting to kick in as we thought we had a shot at 3rd place. We did not think we could catch the 1st two groups.

So, basically I lose the toss for "who is riding a third" and our experienced 24 hour guy agrees to ride a 4th - the last lap of the race, his 4th in 12 hours - Ugh. Everyone else is wagging their tongue from cranking it all night (remember this was driving us out of our hole - "its all about the night"). I head off to try and rest as I only had about 90 minutes of sleep to that point. Travis' group had this dog that would start barking and whining and the owner would ignore it and not try and stop it. Every couple of hours the dog would go off. It was annoying everyone. Anyway, I am laying in the truck trying to get an hour of sleep at about sunrise, maybe 7am or so. I am half asleep but I hear this conversation starting to take place about a rider that broke his chain on the rollers (a series of 7 rolling hills) and the team was leading and they sent another rider out to help and they are really bummed because this is really going to hurt their chances. I keep hearing pieces of this conversation but I'm kind of semi-concious. All of a sudden I come to realizing this conversation is coming from the BORG camp site. If they are in trouble that means we have a shot at them. I sit up in the truck and look for who is talking - its Travis and another team member. My thoughts are confirmed. I kind of ease out of my truck and casually walk over to our campfire and I whisper to the guys - just heard that the BORG group is in trouble - we need to check the clock but I bet we have a shot at second! Well, obviously this pumps everybody up to think that we could claw our way back to, not only a podium finish but, 2nd place. We start scrambling around getting clothes on to head to the tent and confirm the news. We send out our 8am rider. 3 more riders to go - Steve (his 3rd), me (my 3rd), and Steve steps up to do a 4th.

So, Steve comes in from his 3rd and we are about 15-20 minutes behind the BORG guys. I had taken every bit of food and supplements that I had left to give me the energy to go another lap. I had changed my approach to the course after my first lap and, improving even further on my new technique, I do a great job of managing my energy and passing people quickly during my lap; even better than my 2nd lap. When I get in we are only 2 minutes behind the BORG guys and we send our last rider off. Steve breaks off not only his 4th lap in 12 hours but his fastest lap at 1:07 beating the BORG rider by a couple of minutes. My last lap was also my fastest. Can you say Adrenaline?

It was a blast. But the scoring was screwed up and for some reason another team came out of nowhere and was awarded second (even though they were heard to say "I thought we were 6th"). The 24 Hour Staff actually had our team listed as first prior to the awards ceremony. I happened to see the sheet and told the head guy it was wrong. He walked back over to the S/F tent with me and double checked what I told him - that one of our laps was not completed due to the mechanical problem (it was marked that way on the sheet but whoever counted our laps ignored the fact that the problem lap was not completed). He changed it and as he was doing it I noticed this other team on the list and not the BORG group. I said to him - this does not look right. The BORG/Sun America team should be just behind us and we should be in second. He looked at it, asked to see the time sheet for the three teams (ignoring Bolla, assuming they were first), looked at the hand written end time and said "nope, this is the way it is." I said I disagree. He said he didn't have time to figure this out right then, he had to get to the awards. During the awards lots of other errors came to the surface such as 3 other incidences of 1st and 2nd being wrong, the competitors telling him he was wrong as they were standing on the podium and him saying he would look into it later.

Anyway, I feel bad for Travis' group. Both our teams were happy to of made the podium - us from digging out of a huge hole and them for what they accomplished. I want to be confident the results are correct. I want to see the computer print out of the times and how they compare to the hand written times. The computer was hooked to a bar code reader that read a bar code on the numbers plates. When it worked it should have accurate lap times. If you value the data from both methods equally and compare the two you should get accurate data (when one fails the other fills in and makes sense). I just want to know that someone anal is looking over the results with that in mind and making everything right.

So that is our story. And it is to be continued on my part. I learned a lot myself - about managing energy on the bike and matching it to the course layout. I use to just hammer the entire way until I got tired. I tried something new after my first lap and now have confidence that I can do more than 2 laps on the course and be effective, even faster. Regardless of what happens we had a blast and would do it again. I can barely move today as my lower back muscles are stiff and sore. For some reason both my achilles tendons/lower calf muscles are sore. Probably one too many intense laps. :-) You should have been there. If you are interested in bikes it is a good time even if you choose not to ride. The atmosphere and the comradere are great.