A Day That Made Me: ECCC Mountain Bike Championships

Sports teach us lessons — it’s cliche. It’s also true.

This is going to sound really arrogant, but I’ve forgotten more mountain bike races than a lot of people have ever started. What I mean is: Some people have photographic memories of races, courses, and even specific sections of trail. I’m not like that.

Over my four years in college, I must have raced 30-40 days per year. It’s all a blur, but to be fair, that was about 20 years ago.

There are, however, a few races that haven’t escaped me. Unsurprisingly, the memorable ones are usually days of great calamity — like breaking a chain at Mount Snow, fixing it, and then riding myself into the ground — or days of triumph. But there weren’t many victories, honestly.

This is a story about one of those wins, and the lesson I took away from it.

Fittingly, my senior year, the fall 2004 season, was going to be my year, the year that I wholeheartedly focused on collegiate mountain biking, traveling to every race in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) and wrapping up the fall at national championships in Pennsylvania.

Looking back, the first race of the season was a bit prophetic. Simply put, it was a chaotic collegiate race. We were at Plattekill, a New York ski area known for its brutally rocky descents strewn with loose shale. Like any classic XC race, we started by climbing straight up the mountain. Soon, everyone was spread out. I rattled down the first downhill, aboard my scandium Yeti with a noodly RockShox SID and rim brakes, to return to the bottom for another lap. Somewhere along the way, I noticed the course marking was a bit sparse or confusing, but I just kept descending in race-mode.

On my way to the only victory of my collegiate career, in Massachusetts.

At the bottom, a few of us convened at the start/finish — all arriving from different trails. Somewhere up the hill, the course markings were totally wrong. The race official just looked at us and decided to haphazardly “re-start” the race and send us back up the climb again. After one lap, I could tell that University of Vermont’s Dan Vaillancourt would be my main rival, and he was clearly climbing better. I couldn’t keep pace with him on the climbs, but I could catch him on the downhills. On the last lap of that race, I bonked so badly that I had to beg a granola bar off of a spectator, but I never saw Dan again, and he won convincingly that day.

It would continue like this for the rest of the season. Dan would destroy me on the climbs, and I’d take every risk I could to bring him back on the downhills. He’d usually beat me. The only race I actually won that season was the University of Massachusetts Orchard Assault. Dan missed the start, and that course was so twisty, tight, and flat that I was able to hold him off.

This isn’t about that day, though, and it isn’t about Plattekill either.

When we turned up to the final race of the ECCC season, UVM’s home race at Bolton Valley in Vermont, Dan was ahead of me in the overall points tally, but not by much. Double points were awarded at conference finals, so I had a chance.

On Saturday, we raced the cross-country on a cold, muddy day — the type of October Vermont day you have to experience to fully appreciate. Although I had a chance (mathematically), it didn’t feel like I had a chance. My tank had been empty for a while that fall, and Dan was clearly the stronger rider. But collegiate racing is always on the verge of some kind of zany mishap (like a mis-marked course or a missed start), and sure enough, after he put minutes into me on the first couple laps of racing, Dan’s crank arm fell off. I caught him, and completely buried myself to put as many riders between us to maximize my points advantage.

At the cross-country finish. The look of someone with nothing left, someone who has also crashed into a mud puddle.

The next day was the short track, and the brutal, short intensity of that race was really the last thing my body wanted after months of racing (and likely overtraining). Now, I can’t remember how the points shook out after the XC, but I do recall that I had to beat Dan in this race to win the overall title.

As per usual. The short track was a half-baked lap around the Bolton base area with plenty of energy-sucking grass, some short climbs, and really nowhere to get free speed with technical skills.

As per usual, Dan dropped me after the first lap or two, although he was far from the fastest rider that day. Ted King and his brother, Robbie, went on a tear and lapped the entire field at least once. But I wasn’t really worried about this WorldTour racer/gravel influencer to be. I was just grinding out lap after lap at my threshold. It was excruciatingly painful, but I wasn’t going all that fast — basically the worst possible combination.

Moments away from getting dropped by Dan in the final short track.

Then, something changed. Throughout most of the race, my friends and teammates were cheering in that way you do when you feel bad for a racer. You know, “keep it up,” or “nice job.” It’s what you cheer when you mean well, but your expectations have faded, and you’re secretly hoping it will all end soon. Well, in a flash, on the final lap, they began egging me on with crazy intensity. I was probably in 14th place, but their tone made it sound like I was sprinting for the win.

It took me a moment to figure out the race situation, but then I saw Dan running his bike, about a turn or two ahead of me. He had broken his chain.

Realizing that fate had dealt me yet another ace, I knew what I had to do. It was the final lap of the race, and I had to chase down Dan, who was hopelessly running the course for the second day in a row. We came down to the final corner onto the flat gravel patch in front of the ski lodge, and I sprinted past him before the line. It all seemed too good to be true, but it was real. I’d won the ECCC overall in the most unexpected way possible.

I don’t think I realized what this race taught me right away. In the years to come, I went through my fair share of angsty moments as I realized I could never hack it as a pro rider. But what I know now, and what I wish I’d learned sooner is that you just have to stick around. There are factors beyond your control, and they just might break your way. I could go on and on about perseverance, but just hearing the cliches doesn’t hit home like this race did for me. Success isn’t always going to materialize. But it will only materialize if you’re there, and if you’re doing everything you can to achieve it.

Oh, and don’t feel bad for Dan, either. A few weeks later, he went on to finish on the podium at nationals in the Division I race — no small feat given the dominance of teams from Colorado. He stuck around too, and that time, he made sure his bike didn’t break.