Plattekill Pro GRT - Evan Turpen

Last Friday my buddy PJ and I hit the road headed for Plattekill, New York. This would be the third stop of USA Cycling's Pro GRT (gravity tour).

The weekend before we had raced stop #2 in New Hampshire at Highland mountain bike park. Unfortunately there I crashed in the muddy finals and finished a disappointing 26th place.

Needless to say, I was motivated to improve upon this result and aimed to crack into the top ten, if not top five at this race. A bold goal based off of my last weekend's result, but one I thought to be attainable given the right circumstance.

After roughly a three hour drive from PJ's house in Hoboken, New Jersey we finally arrived at our destination, the middle of nowhere. As much as I thought Highland was way out in the boonies, Plattekill is 100 times more. Although Plattekill lacks in location, it more than makes up for in tradition. This place has been around for ages!

A trip into the base lodge alone is indicator enough. It is old and rickety from many years of use and has the feeling and smell of an old log cabin. Upon entering myself for the race the young girl processing my credit card asks me if I have been here before. I replied "nope, this is my first time". Wrong answer. She then explains that I have to watch an instructional safety video about riding in Plattekill before I can finish my registration. She sets me up on a TV nearby and presses play on the DVD player. The next five minutes or so was some of the most hilarious, boring, and wasteful minutes of my life.

The video was a culmination of riding footage from the early 90's that was supposed to instruct me on how to ride my bicycle safely at Plattekill mountain. Without it, I'm not quite sure what I would have done! It taught me how to use my brakes, look ahead, and even tackle nasty obstacles such as the "water-bar". Once that painful video was over, I completed my registration and got on the lift for practice as soon as I was ready.

The lift here may very well have been from 30 years ago...It sure looked that way to me. Despite the old non-detachable triple chair, their lift setup was dialed. They ran the lift about as fast as possible to load and unload bikes and they had a dedicated load/unload person for your bike at the top and bottom. Once at the top you have to pretty much run off the lift to not get whacked in the butt, but I'd rather do this than have a painfully slow lift.

First run down the track was fully blind, as in I had not walked the course previously. It started off with fairly flat and pedally singletrack littered with roots and rocks. The kind of stuff that keeps you on your toes and trying not to clip your pedals. After what seemed like a minute of this traversing, the course took a nice right turn down the fall-line of the mountain and things immediately got gnarly. Big rocks and drops, whooped out muddy rutted sections, and berms that had you struggling to line up for with the extra speed. This stuff was sick!

After these epically cool sections, again the course traversed real flat for probably 30-45 seconds. One more cool technical section then spit out onto yet again another flat, pedally traverse into a big curved wall-ride to the finish. Overall the course was really fun to ride. I LOVED the steeper more technical sections. It was like a playground for me. So much fun!

After four practice runs the sky opened up with consistent rain and lightning shutting down the lift and practice. About an hour later the rain let up but practice was no longer. I decided to be productive and hike up and down the 1,100 foot vertical race course searching for lines.

That night PJ and I went out to dinner in nearby Roxbury, New York and on the way back we stopped by the world famous "Delta House". The Delta House is a wannabe fraternity house that is a staple of the Plattekill ski resort. Beers, booze, card games, motorcycles, bonfires, fireworks, and barbeques. The house is a mecca for entertainment! Around midnight we finally succumb to the days events and went to bed in our luxurious accommodations (PJ's GMC Safari van).

The next morning was a ridiculously long practice session followed by qualifying. I had a decent qualifying run, but couldn't seem to carry good speed through all of the flat traverses. The track was a lot more pedally than I had first thought and I am not in the best of racing shape at the moment. I would end up qualifying in 25th place which was a disappointment. I knew though that there was lots of time to be shaved by pedaling harder on the flat sections so I didn't feel too bad.

After a nice dip in a nearby swimming hole, we again went out to dinner in Roxbury. This time we avoided the Delta House on the way back and got some good sleep for race day.

Race day practice was long, but I only did two practice runs to make sure I didn't wear myself out. Come race run I felt ready to give it my all. The start beeps went off and I sprinted like hell into the first section. Pedaling hard into the first jump, my shifting skipped and I went off the jump with only one foot on the pedals! I put my other foot on in the air, landed, and tried to recover, but I was riding on my heel into the first flat section. I somehow got my foot back in the right spot soon after, but lost some speed for the first flat.

Once into the steeps it was like my run finally started to pick up speed. It felt so good ripping the steep, technical, rough bits. Again into a flat section and this time I tried to maintain my speed, but struggled. Then back to the steeps and I was loving it only to be spit out into the last long pedaling section where I gave it my all. I hit the last wall-ride/corner and almost collapsed from the G-forces and fatigue. I crossed the line in third place with 25 more riders left to go.

In the end I finished 20th place about five seconds off of top ten and seven seconds off of podium. Disappointed with the result, but stoked with how I rode the technical bits, another race weekend was in the books. Trek World Racing's Aaron Gwin took the win with a 2:39.4 and I finished 12.3 seconds off of him with a 2:51.7.

Next up is the U.S. Open in Vernon, New Jersey this coming weekend. I'm looking forward to racing on this more consistently technical track and improving further. I'm also going to make a conscious effort to document a lot better by taking more pictures. I apologize for the lack of photos this time!

More words soon from the road...

Cheers,

Evan