For the past 12 years, High Peaks Cyclery has hosted a 24 hour mountain bike race. This race is held at the Lake Placid Olympic Center, and is called “the 24 Hours of the Adirondacks.”
During the race, individuals and teams of up to four people ride as many laps on a nine to 10 mile mountain bike course as possible in 24 hours.
This year, four members of the RPI Cycling Club participated in the event. Pat Carey, Nate Korey, MJ Torres, and Nathan Friedman drove up to Lake Placid on the morning of Saturday, September 11 to get set up for what would prove to be one of the hardest races they had ever done.
The race started at noon on Saturday in beautiful weather. The RPI team started off on a good foot, and posted several excellent lap times. At 6:30 pm, darkness began to fall. After outfitting the bikes with lights, Rensselaer began the night-riding portion of the race.
On his way back from the first night lap, Carey was told by the scoring table that RPI led in the “Men’s 99 and Under” category—the categories were by combined age of the racers—and was in the top five overall.
Ecstatic, the four journeymen again embarked on the dark course, knowing that the hardest was yet to come. In 24 hour races, the nighttime laps are what will make or break a team. This is when exhaustion and low visibility combine to separate the field in such a grueling race.
Unfortunately for Rensselaer this would prove to be the case yet again. Exhaustion combined with several technical problems began to dismantle RPI’s chances at winning their division.
In addition, several of the teammates started hitting “the wall” and started really needing sleep.
Torres and Friedman decided that they needed to give Carey and Korey some sleep and took it upon themselves to ride when a lot of other teams were trying to get a couple hours of sleep. They traded laps from 1:30 to 6:15 on Sunday morning while Carey and Korey slept.
Unfortunately, after getting back to camp after his second graveyard shift lap, Friedman realized that one of the Clarkson teams had passed RPI during the night. In the next few laps, Clarkson built up about a 15 minute lead and maintained it for the remainder of the race.
Rensselaer did shave a few minutes off the Golden Knights lead over the last few laps, but it was not enough as one of the teams from Clarkson ended up taking the win in the Men’s 99 and Under class.
Clarkson and RPI both finished in the top five overall with 23 laps apiece. The overall winning team had 28 laps, and included a number of Rensselaer alumni and RPI Professor Terry Blanchet.
After riding 23 laps in 24 hours, it was a great showing for the club in their first year in the 24 campaign.
Rensselaer plans to take several teams to the event in 2005 so they can challenge rival Clarkson. And the Golden Knights will have much to worry about as an experienced RPI looks for some redemption.
