Log in • Subscribe

The Gentleman’s Race: Unsanctioned, Unregulated, Unkind, and Unforgettable

By Stephanie Chase • on September 17, 2009

The concept of the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race is like the popular Oregon Trail game – except it involves bikes and there’s no hunting buffalo. You and a small group of pioneering teammates are in the middle of nowhere trying to get to a better place (home) but have to deal with tricky terrain, fatigue, sickness, fording gravel roads and vague maps. You stop at various forts (convenience stores) along the way to buy food to carry you to the next outpost. And it is helpful to finish the ride before dark or your traveling party might be in serious trouble (i.e. the Donner party). A bike jersey isn’t known for its ability to store supplies and like the Oregon Trailers, you have to carry only the essentials: Nutella sandwiches wrapped in foil, bike pumps, tablets to subdue cramping, spare tubes, patch kits, and “5 Hour” energy drinks. Yet despite all those obstacles and completely lacking common sense, twenty three teams (six people each) from around the country came to see how quickly their team could cover the 140 miles from Otis, Oregon back to Portland. My team was built of six women from Portland’s Veloforma cycling team, three of whom had done last year’s hellacious ride over Mt. Hood. Fortunately and unfortunately, we had signed up to the Gentlemen’s Race again and found (i.e. harassed) three more volunteers to attempt to put in a fast time. Out in the sticks of Oregon, things can get a little crazy so it’s a good thing the race was…

Unsanctioned: Rapha is a cycling apparel company based in the United Kingdom that creates unique and epic events that showcase the raw emotion and grit of cycling. The Gentlemen’s race mimics the concept of professional cycling’s spring classics: long, hard one-day races on varied and treacherous courses. Paris-Roubaix is the Queen of the classics, its cobblestone sections famous for breaking both bikes and riders. Winners of the Roubaix finish the race looking like they went ten rounds with Death and still somehow managed to keep racing. The Veloforma team’s dance with death began early Saturday morning in Otis, a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town outside of Lincoln City. The Rapha squad put together a route that meandered through Hebo along the coastal range before popping out near Carlton and being routed through Forest Grove to North Plains to head up and over the West Hills to the most motivating finish line – a bar on East Burnside.

The Gentlemen’s Race, however, is not sanctioned meaning it doesn’t conform to a governing body and the results are not official racing results. The entry fee is $20 plus a case of beer per team. Women and men can race against each other, single-speed bikes can go up against carbon racing machines, racers can stop, get food (or wine, as some teams took the opportunity to sample the Willamette Valley’s best vineyards), and cyclists have to take care of themselves and their needs on the road. Which leads to the next part of the race being…

Unregulated: There are no officials. No wheel cars. If you get a flat tire, you change it yourself and if you don’t have the tools, then you better hope you or your teammates have some MacGyver skills to get your tire repaired. No feed zones. No team cars following you for support. The Rapha course took us on everything from state highways to gravel roads, over mountains, along streams and through small towns.

We followed the rules of the road and teams regulated themselves. All six riders must check in at both check points (at miles 64 and 110, respectively) and the time of the sixth rider counts as the finishing time. It’s a long time to spend on a bike which can be most…

Unkind: Several teams showed up prepared for a team time trial (when cyclists ride in close, aero-dynamic formation) to contend for fastest overall time. Naturally, over the course of 140 miles even well-trained athletes experience fatigue. Endurance events mean constant nutrition and monitoring of the body, as racers have to maintain their caloric intake to have enough energy to keep pedaling. Forget to feed yourself and the result is “bonking,” an unpleasant condition when the body lacks enough energy to keep going. However, the nature of the Gentlemen’s Race was such that not all teams were focused on slaying themselves. While it was competitive with a healthy dose of smack talk leading up to the race, most teams were more interested in mutual survival than destroying the field. The length of the course was the biggest rival, not the other teams. The start staggered teams by three minutes so there was ample opportunity to catch or be caught and ride with a larger group. It’s good to have variety as you’ll spend eight hours watching people’s butts as they pedal and watching gluteus maximus muscle movement is pretty…

Unforgettable: The Veloforma team began the day remembering last year’s race: the difficulty of the climbs over Lolo Pass, the hope that someone would remember to bring the maps this year instead of wandering around Sandy looking for a way back to Portland, and the elation walking into Roots Brewery and knowing we had just completed something exceptionally difficult. Out of twenty three teams, only two were all women (though a couple of ladies rode on mixed teams). With 2008’s route in mind, we had prepared for the ride in the best way possible: by watching Die Hard clips for inspiration and drinking coffee.

On Saturday morning, Team Beer left Otis first and we were slated to depart about forty five minutes afterwards, with teams leaving every three minutes. Teams started based on their expected riding time – faster teams received a later seeding so that we would all finish around the same time. And then Veloforma was called to the line. John McClane couldn’t have been more pumped up than we were.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns… that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Unknown: We knew it would be a long day. We knew we had to prepare for mechanical issues and flat tires. We knew to bring food, Ibuprofen (try sitting on a bike saddle for more than three hours and you’ll know why). We knew to bring sunscreen, money, insurance cards and a camera. But there were things we didn’t know that we didn’t know, like how our team captain would get sick ten miles into the race and insist on continuing and finishing as she didn’t want to disappoint us. We didn’t know that a freak allergic reaction and latent illness are two things that a person can’t race through and hope that their body will quickly recover. We didn’t know that it would take us ten hours to get ourselves and our ill teammate back to Portland, where we finished two and a half hours behind the winning team (River City) and nearly three hours after the fastest solo rider (a rider from HP Chiro did the course in just under seven hours). As each team passed us, we watched our ambitions fade up the road.

But what took place over the next nine and a half hours, as we pushed/pulled our ailing teammate to the finish was profound exercise in solidarity and support. It’s easy to be a good teammate when things are going well, when the team is winning, when people are in good moods and positive. The true strength of a team, however, is exhibited when the going gets rough, when you may have to sacrifice personal ambition to lend support. And how this is carried out, begrudgingly or with magnanimity, illustrates what kind of team you have built. For better or for worse, our teammate’s insistence to carry was done because as a true competitor she couldn’t quit. Nor would she let her team down by abandoning. And likewise, we considered all dropping out of the race so that she wouldn’t be the only person in the broom wagon. In the end, we made a gentlemen’s compromise and rode to Portland at a less strenuous pace so that we could all finish together. During the last year, at some point or another, she had carried each of us, nursing us through periods of tough training, bad races, crashes and all the frustrations that come with trying to fine tune your body at an elite level. So on Saturday we carried her; on the climbs we flanked her in a diamond formation – two riders on either side and two in front and one behind – and took our punctured tubes and looped them around our shoulders so that she had an easy handle to grab onto for pulls. The day started at 9:15 a.m. in Otis and ended around 7:15 p.m. as we crossed the Burnside Bridge.

Veloforma’s ambitions will have to wait until next year, if we are lucky enough to participate in the Gentlemen’s Race again. And if we do race, the Oregon Trail is going to be re-blazed, John McClane-style.

Results from the 2009 Gentlemen’s Race

1. River City
2. Studio Velo
3. Team HPC (fastest single time: 6:59)
4. Half Fast Velo
5. Team Oregon
6. Nike Livestrong
7. Terry & His Young Friends
8. Ironclad (men)
9. Yakima
10. Rapha Racing
11. Royal Family of International Acclaim
12. Embrocation Cycling Journal
13. Gründelbrüisers
14. Team Insiderati
15. Ironclad (women)
16. Team Beer
17. Mission Cycling
18. Baron Bicycles
19. Rapha Continental
20. Eddy Merkins (single speeds)
21. Cars-R-Coffins
22. Veloforma
23. DNF. Cyclepath