Unspeakable.
Words: Phil Elsasser
Images: Lliam Dunn and Stephen Fitzgerald
Scared. I haven’t been scared about doing something on a bike since, well, probably 2009 when I got the chance to do my first NRC stage race at Cascade Classic. Lining up against guys that you have held in awe while watching pro races for years can be at the least, a tiny bit intimidating. So to be scared the night before a bike ride, with a few local guys in the mountains seemed silly. But when you looked at the stats of the ride, maybe it was worth being scared. 175 miles, 17,000 feet of climbing across a mixture of single track, gravel, and plenty of pavement for good measure.