Garrett County Gran Fondo--Results

6/21/2014

The organizers decided not to time the entire event, instead sticking to past practice of timing the significant climbs and posting the cumulative results. Of course, strategy plays a part in the outcomes. If you are riding to compete for climb rankings you can soft pedal between climbs and then kill it on the 5 climbs. If you are riding to see how high you can place in the overall or going for a personal best on the overall, then your climb times may skew south a little. Anyway, I apologize if I missed anyone but below are the names I caught while scanning the results with the first name plugged in there for reference.

Marty Sedluk came in 2nd today, 75 yards behind the winner, Jeremiah Bishop. Bishop is not some schlep from MD but a professional mountain bike racer, 11 time member of USA Cycling Team, gold medal winner in the Pan American Games and in 2007 was ranked the #1 mountain bike rider in the US. More to come.

3 Comments

fan

6/23/2014 12:33:22 am

Congrats Marty. Would love to hear about the ride and your finish with Jeremiah Bishop.

Marty Wannabe

6/23/2014 07:32:25 am

So how did Jeremiah gap you by that 75 yards at the end? Who out of the Ohio group was next? Fill in the blanks please.

Marty

6/24/2014 11:37:31 am

I spent much of the day riding with Dustin who was riding fantastic. There was a lead group that worked its way down to about 8 riders. At the time I did not know much about Jeremiah Bishop but I could tell that he was super-fast. There were several other riders that were riding really well and we made sure that they did not get too far in front of us. There were several times that the pace really picked up and it was not always on the hills. The lead group of riders would break up at times and we worked hard to catch whoever was off the front. When we rode through the gravel section Dustin’s shifting must have clogged up and he had trouble shifting the rest of the ride and was stuck in the big chain ring. If not he would very likely have been the first finisher.

Late in the ride I was solo off the front pedaling as fast I could with Jeremiah Bishop and Josh Beck working together chasing a minute or two behind. The rest of the group had broken up and they were each riding solo behind us. Jeremiah & Josh caught me half way of the last climb and I got on Jeremiah’s wheel as he passed. I did not look back but Josh was right there on my wheel for a moment. When Jeremiah looked back and saw me he picked up the pace and Josh dropped off and I was struggling to stay on Jeremiah’s wheel. As we made the final turn Jeremiah picked it up again and I dropped off a little but was able to catch back up and was still thinking about when I would come around him. When we could see the finish sign Jeremiah got out of the saddle and put a gap on me, I looked back to make sure that no one was behind me that could catch me and I just rode in behind him. There was not much I could do about it.

We gathered up at the finish and talked for a while, after a few minutes I asked him his name and then realized why I was having such a hard time staying with him. Jeremiah was really nice and introduced me to the other guys as they rolled in and told all of them I had come in 2nd behind him. It was fun hanging out with them and after a while we headed over for some food and drinks together. There are no prizes handed out for KOM’s or for finishing first, it was all about challenging yourself and spending the day in the mountains and meeting new people.

And yes, it is a couple of days later and I am still tired.

Garrett County Gran Fondo--Results

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