Nothing unusual here — one guy waiting while his buddy addressed a mechanical problem on his mountain bike. Except that we were in a race. “Go on!” Steve yelled. “You’re in second place!”

We were about a third of the way through Sunday’s Huck-A-Buck mountain bike race at Lake Crabtree when Steve Rodgers hit a tree root. He bounced on the back of his seat, causing the front to tilt — and stick — painfully skyward. There were five of us competing in the Cat 2 Men’s 50+ category: Two were somewhere behind us, Peter Hollis was well ahead. Barring the heart attack someone at the start advised us not to have in the 100-degree heat (the mercury at RDU would hit 102 an hour after we were done), Peter had a lock on first place. Steve had hung with him for a while, then drifted back. I had slowly drifted forward and had been riding behind Steve for 15 minutes or so when his seat rebelled.

When I mention this side of my life to others, I’m careful to avoid saying that I race mountain bikes; rather, that I ride in mountain bike races. I have made the podium three times in my mountain biking career; all three times I have also come in last. (Translation for those of you annoyed by brain teasers: There was no one to come in behind me.) I’m competitive, but mostly against myself. At the time of Steve’s seat mishap, I was beginning to realize how hot it was; the fact that I was hanging with Steve, who is legitimately familiar with the podium, was more than I had hoped for at the Huck-A-Buck. When he stopped, it seemed natural to stop with him. And then his perplexed look and admonition to go on.

When Andy Schleck’s chain dropped as he attacked in the Pyrenees during Stage 15 of Le Tour de France, Alberto Contador was skewered for taking advantage of the situation and, it was speculated, taking an insurmountable lead in cycling’s premier event. For while the yellow jersey is one of the grandest prizes in sport and the competition for it is unparalleled, cycling has a curious subsystem of gentlemen’s agreements that eclipse battle. One of them is not to take advantage of a competitor’s mechanical misfortune. That in itself seems curious because isn’t having your bike in top operating condition as important as having your physical self likewise prepared? And if dumb luck intervenes and an external force causes a breakdown, well, isn’t dumb luck as critical to the outcome of a sporting event as skill and sweat? (Just ask Lance Armstrong, who’s seven years of good luck came back to bite him on his goodbye tour.) Further, in the case of Andy Schleck, it’s debatable whether his dropped chain resulted from a mechanical malfunction or human error. Video of the mishap has undergone more scrutiny than the Zapruder tape; none other than Lennard Zinn, the Zen master of wrenching, suggests that improper shifting may have been to blame. Regardless, was Contador wrong to take advantage? Should a wide receiver racing toward the end zone stop if the cornerback in hot pursuit trips over a shoelace that comes untied? Where do you draw the line between healthy competition and something beyond?

So, I continued. At first, with a twinge of guilt. I was happy riding with Steve, content to take 3rd place if I could hang on. Guilty, and then …

I quickly warmed to the notion of standing just below Peter on the podium. (Figuratively, for there is no  formality of an actual podium at the Huck-A-Buck.) Despite the heat, despite being low on water on a miserably hot day, I picked up the pace. Periodically, I would hear someone coming up from behind. Assuming it was Steve, I picked up the pace even more, only to be passed (lapped, for the sake of accuracy) by a Cat 1 expert racer. Steve wasn’t able to fix his seat issue and had to ride the last two-thirds of the race with his seat jabbing into his … him. I crossed the finish in 1 hour, 43 minutes and 41 seconds; Steve was three minutes behind.

Bikes break, racers crash, slower riders sneak in and grab the glory. In the world of competitive mountain bike racing, mine was a legitimate second place finish, with all the congratulations and recognition (in this case, a rain poncho and a set of collapsable bike fenders) that go with it. In road cycling, the finish would have been tainted, my move perhaps viewed as crass and unsportsmanlike. When I mention to anyone who seems vaguely interested (breathing qualifies) that I finished second, I’m quick to include the asterisk that Steve had a mechanical.

That detail may disappear from my account as time passes.

* * *

Find the complete results of Sunday’s Huck-A-Buck here.

* * *
Greeting the racers at the start line: the number 103 duct-tapped to the pavement. 103 — the forecast high for Sunday. Officially, it only reached 100 at neighboring RDU.

* * *

What do mom and dad do when their son is busy becoming a national-caliber mountain biker? They decide to race as well. Last weekend, 15-year-old wunderkind Luke Vrouwenvelder of Chapel Hill competed in the USA Cycling Mountain Bike Nationals in Granby, Colo. The experience (not to mention Luke’s prodding) prompted mom Angie to compete in today’s Cat 3 Beginner Women’s race and dad Adrian to race in the Clydesdale category. “I spent yesterday in out the sun pulling the head gasket. Adrian said before his race. “I’m not sure what to expect today,”

* * *

This was the 9th Huck-A-Buck and, alas, the second to last. Early on, the Phil Liggett of Huck-A-Buck announcing, Pat Lundergan, announced: “There will be only one more year of the Huck-A-Buck. Pat and I are grownups now. We’re getting too old for this.”

* * *

HAB MC Pat Lundergan.

Pat’s running commentary has been a big part of what makes the Huck-A-Buck … well, the Huck-A-Buck. For example, shortly after the elementary race (with a strong showing of a dozen racers), Pat announced: “Parents of elementary kids be sure to grab a Red Bull shot for your kids on the way out. That’ll really help with the rest of the day.”

* * *

Pat again, as a podium finisher walked away with a gift certificate: “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

* * *

And again, encouraging racers to return their ankle-mounted timing strip at the end of the race: “Please be sure to return the chips. Otherwise, we’ll have to pay for them and we’re broke. We will hunt you down. Happy Fun has done it before and we’ll do it again.”

* * *

In a conversation last week with Chapel Hill coach and yoga guru Sage Rountree, among the bits of sage insights she shared: Make every workout count. That’s what Hillsborough’s Peter Hollis thought he was doing Saturday when he drove to Lake Crabtree to do a pre-race lap in the blistering late afternoon heat. “I thought it would make me realize I had no business coming back to race today.” Apparently, it just egged him on. Hollis, who is 58, won the Cat 2 Men’s 50+ category, beating his nearest competitor by 8 minutes.

* * *

Look for results to be posted … sometime, somewhere (hey, it is Happy Fun Racing after all).

Actually, Sage Rountree corrects, this may be the perfect time to start thinking about goals for the fall. Rountree lives in Chapel Hill and is perhaps best known for her yoga-for-athletes books and clinics, which she conducts internationally. She’s also a coach, working with both elite and beginner athletes, and a marathoner (3:43:00 at Boston 2008), Ironperson (13:08:17, Ironman Coeur d’Alene 2009), ultramarathoner ( 5:10:45 in this year’s Frosty 50K trail race). And she has two kids.

“Picking your next goal before your race is the perfect way to channel that extra energy during the taper,” says Rountree.

While I haven’t quite begun to taper — the Roan Moan is just a week out but the Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon isn’t until Sept. 5 — I knew what she meant. Two big goals I’ve yet to tackle, but they will soon pass. Then what? The last thing I want to do is let months of training fizzle while I ponder what’s next.

When I mentioned the Second Empire fall series, Rountree was on board.

Sage Rountree likely was thinking about her next race when she finished this one.

“Series are great,” she says. “They’re a way of sustaining a goal. In the triathlon series, for instance, it takes the pressure off any one single race. You approach it as part of a whole.”

And, she adds, you establish a sense of camaraderie. “You see the same competitors, you go up against the same people in your age group.”

I like a series for another reason. There were eight races in Second Empire’s Spring Series. In my age group (50-54), no one did every race and only two guys did seven. By my cyphering, if I had done all eight (I did one: the Second Empire 5K Classic), I might have cracked the top 10 finishers. (The No. 10 guy only did three races.) Persistence, in a series based on cumulative points, equals glory.

A series isn’t the only kind of sustained goal. Fall is when a number of 0-to-5K, walk-to-run training programs kick in. I’m a graduate of the Fit-tastic program offered through The Athlete’s Foot in Cameron Village. The 10-week program, which begins Aug. 18, takes non-runners and gradually introduces them to running. At first, you run a minute, then walk for two. Over time that ratio flips until you’ve weeded out the walking altogether and are capable of running the entire Monster Dash 5K (3.1 miles American) on Oct. 31. The program launched in fall 2008, has added a spring version, and has had 425 participants. (For more on beginner runner programs, check out this GGNC post from March 31.)

For runners, in fact, fall is the time to ramp up. Cooler weather means more races, from 5Ks to marathons. Cyclists are more likely to suffer what Rountree refers to as the “post-partum blues,” as the onset of cooler weather and shorter days causes a significant drop in planned events. But they aren’t without options, either. A century ago, pro bike racers in Europe got antsy in the off-season. So they came up with cyclo-cross racing — basically racing modified road bikes off-road — which gave them reason to train between the warm weather road events. Today, cyclo-cross racing stands on its own, and the North Carolina Cyclo-Cross Series gives Tarheel cyclists reason to keep racing throughout the winter.

A long fall hike at Crowders Mountain is an admirable goal. (Photo courtesy North Carolina State Parks.)

Your fall goal can be whatever you make it. Races are good, so are classes, and chances are your municipal parks & recreation department has a wide offering for the fall. Here in Cary, for instance, there are various levels of Taekwondo (beginner, for families, for kids as young as 4), dance classes, cardio classes, aerobic classes and yoga classes (including chair yoga), as well as assorted team sports (basketball, volleyball, softball), a tennis ladder — pert near anything you’d want to do. You can even come up with your own goal: By Thanksgiving, be able to hike the 7.2-mile Sycamore Trail at Umstead State Park, or the 6.2-mile Ridgeline Trail linking Crowders Mountain State Park west of Charlotte with Kings Mountain State Park in South Carolina, or the 5-mile Moores Wall Loop Trail at Hanging Rock State Park.

The point: Fall needn’t be a wind-down time. Start planning now and you’ll find plenty of incentive to keep working. The season may be winding down, but you don’t have to.

I flinched. “That’s the one we’re doing today?” My grip on the steering wheel tightened.

It was early Saturday and Alan and I were headed to Blowing Rock for a mountain training ride. Our objective for the day was the 57.1-mile Blowing Beech route, which begins and ends in picturesque downtown Blowing Rock, with a mid-way detour up Beech Mountain. Just three and a half miles, but in those three and a half miles we would gain 1,700 feet.

Why?

We were training for the Roan Moan two weeks out. The Roan Moan is a popular mountain century ride that goes along civilly enough for 71 miles. Then it begins a 7-mile, 1,700-foot climb up to Carver’s Gap, elevation 5,512 feet.

“And the climb up Roan,” Alan said paging ahead … . I let my mind intentionally drift, tuning back in as Alan was putting his Phil Liggett on the ascent, “really, it’s only the first two miles you need to worry about. After that, it, well, it doesn’t level out. But you can start using gears again.” I pictured myself wearing Phil’s renowned “mask of pain!”

Alan waits out a rain delay on NC 194.

Doing a mountain century is one of my two goals for this summer. For years, my adventure accomplice Alan Nechemias has been gently encouraging me to try one. At the start of every cycling season, I’ve proclaimed, “This is the year.” At the end of every cycling season I’ve found myself saying, “Well, dang, maybe next year?” This year, after extensively discussing the merits of the various mountain century rides — the Blue Ridge Brutal, Bridge-to-Bridge, Hilly Hellacious, Assault on Mount Mitchell and the Roan Moan among them — we concluded that the latter might be the best for a first-timer. I made the ultimate commitment: I got out the plastic and registered online.

Alan’s oration from John Summerson’s “The Complete Guide to Climbing (by Bike) in the Southeast” worried me. I hadn’t romanticized doing a rigorous mountain century (easy to do watching Contador, Shelck, et al pumping their way up the Alps and Pyrenees) but I was starting to realize that, with two weeks to go, I wasn’t adequately prepared, either. I’d been riding, three times a week, mostly two-hour rides on the mountain bike at hilly Umstead. I’d even done a couple mountain training rides. But my longest ride of the year was 62 miles, and the toughest climbing I’d done was the Triple Hump — and of the three humps I’d had to stop briefly going up Pilot Mountain and I’d cramped climbing Hanging Rock. I had been training, but not training smart.

That was in stark contrast to my preparation for Summer Goal #2: running a half marathon. For it, I plunked down $125 and joined a training program through FAST (Functional and Specific Training) Coaching. The program included a day-by-day training schedule for the 12-week program, two organized training runs a week (one to work on pace, the other distance), and access to two coaches. When I went into the program, my goal was to simply finish a half marathon. After four weeks, I had little doubt I could finish; My thoughts had shifted to how fast I could finish. I didn’t need a list of 10 reasons why coaches help, I had physical proof.

Left to my own devices on the bike, I was still worried about simple survival.

We pulled into Blowing Rock a little before 10 under an unsettled sky. The forecast called for a 30 percent chance of rain in the morning, increasing to 60 percent by mid-afternoon. After years of getting suckered by bad forecasts, we had no second thoughts about pushing off.

After a gorgeous 5-mile descent down Shulls Mill Road, we jogged briefly onto NC 105 before heading southwest on Broadstone Road. Shortly after passing through Valle Crucis, we began a 4.5-mile climb up NC 194 that’s not in John Summerson’s cannon, but could be. (A MapMyRide profile shows the climb ranges from 6 to 9 percent.) That’s when the sky turned from ominous to overflowing. A little spit at first, and then — with about a half mile to go to the top, with our glasses fogged and bodies soaked through, Alan steered us off the road and under the meager eve of a small building.

“Now it’s just unsafe,” he said.

If we had $20, we agreed that we would have flagged down one of the ubiquitous pickups passing by and caught a ride back to Blowing Rock. Instead, we until the rain let up, reversed course and headed back. We wound up doing three good climbs over 38 miles, but it was far short of the 57-miler with the mettle-testing climb up Beech Mountain that I felt I needed in preparation for Roan Mountain. My schedule precluded a return training trip this week, next week is too close to the race.

Had I sought out a cycling coach, I doubtles would have more mountain miles in the saddle. I’m sure I would have done more long rides, probably a couple in the 70-mile range, and I likely would have done weekly interval work. And I know I  would have put in far fewer junk miles, or miles basically just for the sake of riding.  At this point, for this ride, it’s too late for a coach, even a Chris Carmichael. Now, it’s desperation time.

Anybody know if Tony Robbins is still around?

Representatives from the Department of Interior, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality will be on hand to hear what you have to say, specifically in the areas of:

• Working land, open space, and landscape conservation
• Outdoor recreation
• Youth engagement and environmental education.
• General discussion

From these meetings, America’s Great Outdoors Initiative hopes to come up with “solutions for building a 21st century conservation and recreation agenda and reconnecting all Americans with the outdoors.” Again, sounds good — especially the “reconnecting all Americans with the outdoors” part — even if we aren’t entirely sure what it means. Thursday’s session in Asheville is your chance to provide some definition to the AGOI.

Here’s the skinny on that meeting.

When: Thursday, 1-4 p.m.
Where: Asheville-Buncombe County Technical Institute, Asheville Campus
340 Victoria Road, Asheville.
Registration: While the event is open, it wouldn’t hurt to pre-register to improve your chances of being heard. Do that by emailing Teresa Lovelace at Teresa_Lovelace@nps.gov.
More info: go here.

Can’t make it? You can share your thoughts here.

I didn’t plan to take the Circle the Triangle route to Durham the morning after Herlihy’s reading, in large part because my bike wasn’t set up. I hadn’t mounted my GPS (critical for navigating the mean streets of Cary to the trailhead), my luggage rack wasn’t attached (mainly for snack hauling), and I didn’t have a glovebox — a small ditty-bag that Velcros to the top tube and holds my iPhone (for Tweeting) and field-size reporter’s notebook. But the GPS mount proved more straightforward than I’d expected and the luggage rack was a quick-release, mounting easily to the seat post. Within 15 minutes I realized all I needed was the glovebox and I was set. After hitting two nearby bike shops I found one that was serviceable and was set. By then it was only 11 a.m., certainly enough time to make it the 35 miles or so to Durham and back. The one potential fly in my 70-mile roundtrip plan: the temperature was already in the upper 80s.

My crossbike — no "high-wheeler."

The Circle the Triangle concept, championed by the Triangle Greenways Council, was built on the notion that one day the Triangle’s various municipal greenway corridors would grow to their geopolitical boundaries, and wouldn’t it be swell if they might be able to meet up and form a region-wide pedestrian greenway network. Say, for instance, you were at Meredith College in Raleigh. You could take Raleigh greenway (the Reedy Creek Greenway, to be specific) about 2.5 miles out to Umstead State Park. There, you could pick up the 5-mile bike & bridle trail over to Lake Crabtree, which happens to be where the northern trailhead for the 7-mile-or-so Black Creek Greenway. Black Creek goes into Bond Park, where it hooks up with the White Oak Creek Greenway which runs about the same distance west to the American Tobacco Trail, a 22-mile rails-to-trails project that travels from western Wake County north into downtown Durham. It was a far-flung notion at the time; today, less than four miles of that route remain to be finished. In two years or so the roughly 40-mile route could be done.

With my GPS as my guide, I snaked out of my neighborhood near Cary Towne Center up to Maynard Road. Maynard is a somewhat busy four lane, but the outside lanes are extra wide, accommodating cyclists (cyclists comfortable riding in traffic). After 4.26 miles (the GPS, remember?) I took a left on Castalia Drive and rode less than a mile before picking up the last few hundred yards of the well-marked Black Creek Greenway.

It took 4.87 miles to get to the headwaters of the greenway.

It was here that I had my first Lenz moment: It had taken me 23 minutes to travel the nearly five miles to the trailhead — a pokey 11 miles per hour. Slow, by modern pavement-riding standards, thanks to a series of stoplights on Maynard. Lightening fast in Lenz’s day, when what pavement there consisted of cobblestones  (check out tomorrow’s Stage 3 of the Tour de France). Black Creek took me into Bond Park where I hooked up with the White Oak Creek Greenway at the boathouse and continued west.

One caveat about greenway travel by bike: On weekends, early mornings and late evenings, the greenway — just about any greenway — will be crowded with walkers, strollers, joggers, runners, kids learning to walk. Not the best avenue for a speedy bike ride. When the temperature is in the 90s, however, you have the path to yourself. Thus, I made good time until the first hiccup on this route: a break in the greenway at MacArthur Drive, where Cary greenway officials are at an impasse with Norfolk Southern over how to cross the freight line’s railroad tracks. Fortunately, there’s a quick, mostly bike-friendly detour right on MacArthur, left on Waldo Rood and left again on Davis Drive back to the greenway, which picks up just past Davis Drive Middle School.

The China of my ride: Construction of the Triangle Expressway.

Here was the part of the ride I was most looking forward to: White Oak west under N.C. 55 to it’s current end, at Green Level Church Road. The stretch past 55 is about three years old and rolls through a wetland, at times on long stretches of boardwalk. It’s remote, it’s verdant — and, until 2012, it’s closed because it has the misfortune of passing under the under-construction Triangle Expressway. Another Lenz moment.

Frank Lenz encountered many a detour along the way. In China, for instance, the government forbid him from taking his preferred route. Undeterred, he found alternate routes, especially challenging considering he didn’t travel with maps. (Main reason: there weren’t many in the 1890s.) In my case, I simply consulted my GPS and found a short greenway connector that fed into a small neighborhood, on the other side of which was Green Level West Road. Green Level West is a Bike Route (2) and has been granted the power to penetrate Triangle Expressway construction. After 2.67 miles I took a right on White Oak Church Road and a little over a half mile later was on the American Tobacco Trail, the spine of the Triangle’s greenway system.

Frank Lenz took self portraits on his trip, setting up his box camera, then triggering the shutter by riding over a cable. Time-delay shutter release makes the process easier with today's point-and-shoots.

If you were to pick the most prized recreation real estate in the Triangle — an area with two state parks (Eno River and Umstead), two state recreation areas (Falls and Jordan lakes), and a multitude of top-notch county and municipal parks — it would have to be the ATT. Hardcore marathon runners train on it, so do newbies working toward their first 5K. Mountain bike racers put in miles here to develop their cardio, octogenarians bring their hybrids here for a peaceful ride. It’s one of the few long trails in the region that’s horse friendly. And it’s the most popular walking destination in the Triangle.

Part of the ATT’s allure: It’s pancake flat, or nearly so, built on the bed of an abandoned rail line. Thus, the miles pass quickly, miles on a finely screened crushed gravel surface Wake County), miles on pavement (the Durham stretch north of I-40 to downtown), miles on both (parallel paths in Chatham County). Miles through a maturing Piedmont forest, miles over two old trestles, miles dipping down to, but staying well above, wetlands. It’s easy to find yourself clocking 18 miles per hour with seemingly minimal effort. “Seemingly,” because by the time I’d reached Massey Chapel Road nearly 10 miles later, I was surprised by how quickly I had arrived — and by how tired I was.

The stretch between Massey Chapel and where the ATT resumes at N.C. 54 on the other side of I-40 is the most daunting stretch of missing greenway in the Triangle. It’s less than two miles, but it involves a bridge over I-40, a bridge years in the planning. At last report, Durham had finally approved a design for the bridge, a route had been OK’d and construction was scheduled to begin by year’s end. Supposedly, this missing link will be done within two years. My heat-soaked brain wished it was done today; because it wasn’t, I faced a daunting road detour up busy NC 751, through an industrial complex and across NC 54. I pedaled up to a convenience store at Streets of Southpoint mall, got two jugs of Gatorade and a two-pack of Hostess Cupcakes and asked: What would Frank Lenz do? Would Frank abandon with just nine miles remaining after gorging on too-sweet energy drink and a couple of gooey chocolate cakes?

Of course not. Then again, Lenz disappeared in Turkey never to be heard from again. Couldn’t the same happen braving my way through Southpoint’s treacherous parking lot? I decided I should ease into this new life of a modern day bike explorer: a successful test of the Circle the Greenway concept would have to wait another day.

Preferably one with a temperature in the low 70s.

For a bike race with only five contestants, event organizer Eva Oberdoerster was having one devil of a time getting it under way.

Simply gathering everyone at the starting line had taken a good 20 minutes, what with the riders drifting off this way and that. Then there was the fact that no one — Oberdoerster included — was quite sure where the starting line even was.

But that was nothing compared to the woes encountered once everyone was assembled. One contestant couldn’t keep her bike upright and another was having trouble figuring out how to put his feet on the pedals. A third couldn’t get pointed in the right direction, and then there were the two riders whose rear ends kept floating off their seats.

“It was mass confusion,” Oberdoerster later admitted. But certainly understandable, considering that none of the five had bothered to train — or had ever raced before, for that matter. Understandable, too, considering this particular race happened to be on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thirteen years ago, when dive shop owner Debby Boyce thought up the idea for an underwater bike race the concept made a modicum of sense. The old steel girder bridge linking Morehead City and Atlantic Beach had just been replaced with a modern, four-lane concrete span. Rather than disassemble the old bridge, the engineers simply sank it, sending the structure — marked roadway and all — to a new home on the bottom of Bogue Sound, in about 50 feet of water.

Roadway? Underwater bike race? Made sense to Boyce, who was always looking for offbeat ways to promote her business, Discovery Diving of Beaufort. The roadway may have made sense to Boyce, but it didn’t always make sense to the biking divers. “Some stuck to the actual road, but most preferred to ride along the top of the steel framework.”

Enthusiasm for those early races was hampered by Bogue Sound’s limited visibility, typically less than 15 feet thanks to the turbidity encountered when river and ocean meet. So when Boyce heard that the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries was planning to add a surplus military ship to an artificial reef not far offshore, she decided on a change of venue.

The race’s gain marked an ironic end for its new host, a 320-foot landing ship/repair freighter called the Indra, which managed to survive three wars — World War II, Korea and Vietnam — only to be scuttled as a peace dividend. In 1992, the 47-year-old vessel joined several boxcars, an F-14, two C-130 aircraft and some concrete pipe as part of Artificial Reef 330, about 10 miles off Emerald Isle. The reef is one of 38 such man-made fish habitats created by the state for the benefit of sport fishermen and divers.

Relocating to the Indra gave the already quirky event another twist. It also gave Boyce a better platform for promoting what few people realize is one of the world’s premier spots for wreck diving. Before the advent of sonar and modern meteorology, more than 600 ships fell victim to the coast’s violent weather, surreptitiously shifting shoals and warfare. (During a particularly deadly stretch of World War II, from January through June of 1942, German U-boats sank at least 29 ships off the North Carolina Coast alone.)

Add to these wrecks the coast’s proximity to the Gulf Stream, a river of warm water that snakes up the coast from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing with it the tropical fish and other marine life that make Caribbean diving so popular, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic was actually a playground for scuba divers.

Two years ago, the race took on a sense of purpose when it hooked up with Mile of Hope, an Atlantic Beach charity that sponsors a weekend beach vacation every May for about 40 juvenile terminal cancer patients at East Carolina University’s Medical Center and their families.

Through it all, though, Boyce has tried to keep the annual Fourth of July event fun and noncompetitive, and Thursday’s race appeared to be no exception.

That is, until someone broke out the WD-40.

A couple of hours before race time, two women were sitting outside Discovery’s shop on the Intracoastal Waterway, waiting for a morning charter to return. Their conversation eventually turned to the race. “How will it work?” one asked. “I mean, how do you ride a bike underwater?”

As the competitors began gathering mid-afternoon, none of them seemed to have an answer — at least one they were willing to share. And even if they did have a particular strategy in mind, it likely changed when they got a look at the selection of bikes.

Largely unnoticed to this point was a pile of mud-encrusted metal framework heaped at the far end of the nearest dock. Dive shop employee Dion Viventi had been poking through the mess, which from a distance looked like a tangle of crab pots, or maybe salvaged reinforcing bar. “Come on and pick out your bikes,” he finally yelled.

The offering was a motley collection of 10-speeds, three-speeds, three-wheelers, balloon-tire cruisers and a various kids’ bikes. The handlebars were askew on most, missing on some. Rims were impossibly bent, chains rusted to sprockets. The primary determination for race-worthiness: Whether they could be extracted from the pile.

Viventi had already undertaken this process. An orange three-speed, a green 10-speed with curled-under handlebars turned up, a banana bike and a once-proud baby blue Schwinn Le Tour appeared to be the best prospects. Pam Williams thought so as she went directly for the banana bike. Low to the ground, much like herself, she thought; perhaps she could bypass that cumbersome pedaling and simply scoot it along.

“That one’s spoken for,” Viventi informed her, nodding toward a tall, long-legged competitor walking back to the dive shop. About then Pam’s husband, Johnnie, caught up to her. “This one looks good,” he said, wiggling the bike’s butterfly handlebars.

“It’s that girl’s,” Pam snapped. ” ‘That girl’s’ — listen to me!”

Pam settled on the Le Tour, a curious choice considering the large frame would be impossible for her to straddle, let along ride underwater. Curious, unless she was expecting help. Immediately, the Smithfield couple, both of whom are certified dive instructors, began trying to straighten the bent rear rim and free up the rusted chain.

Johnnie was joking about the chain — until he noticed Gordon Thompson generously applying WD-40 to his own selection. “Let me try a little of that when you’re done,” Johnnie asked. Then, as if the lubricant was equally effective at freeing inner thoughts, Johnnie confided, “I’m planning on pushing her.”

It takes about an hour to reach the Indra, and after the dive boat, Outrageous IV, had cleared the Beaufort Inlet and reached its cruising speed of 17 knots (about 19 mph), a calm settled over the boat. Including riders, race officials and spectators, 19 were aboard.

Word from a previous charter was that conditions on the Indra were good: water temperature about 80 degrees and visibility about 50 feet — a statistic of particular importance since that was roughly the length of the race course.

The calm seemed to cause other riders to drop their guard. Gordon Thompson let slip that he and Lori Ezman planned a strategy similar to the Williamses, while rumor had it that Renate Eichinger was using some sort of newfangled underwater walkie-talkie. She and Viventi would be in communication throughout the race, though it wasn’t clear how this might aid their effort.

Pam Williams, meanwhile, appeared to be meditating, her eyes shut behind clouded sunglass lenses. “She getting psyched for the race?”

Johnnie glanced at his wife. “She’s sleeping.”

At the race site, two crew members unceremoniously heaved the bikes overboard as Discovery’s Bill Thompson offered the lone pre-race instruction: “You can cheat, but it’s gotta be fun.” Then, one by one, the divers plunged off the back and left side of the boat, looking something like penguins waddling off an ice floe.

With so little formality, the chaos at the starting line wasn’t surprising. And when Oberdoerster finally got everyone pointed forward, their butts as firmly planted in their bike seats as buoyant salt water would allow, it wasn’t surprising either that when she flashed the “OK” sign to see if everyone was ready, Pam assumed the race had begun. Johnnie emerged from the wings, grabbed the bike seat with his left hand and started pushing Pam’s back with his right.

In the slow-motion way that events take place under water, Oberdoerster motioned them to stop, but had second thoughts as the other riders stirred to life. Fins began thrashing, bringing up silt from the Indra’s deck. The few spot and spadefish that hadn’t been scared off by the initial ruckus now scattered, the thousands of finger-long bait fish that had been circling 20 feet overhead fled, and even the 4-foot barracuda — which never threaten, but rarely give ground, either — backed off. It was roily mayhem, but mayhem for naught: the Williamses’ fast start provided an insurmountable lead. Within about four minutes, their relatively effective technique spirited them across what was believed to be the finish line.

Despite the dubious nature of the start, there was no heated scene at the finish line, no getting in Oberdoerster’s face mask, no kicking sand on her fins. Instead, the also-rans as well as the spectators scattered across the Indra, some exploring her hold, some content to swim among the gradually returning sea life. Still, the competitive juices prevailed for some, and their persistence may have yielded the winning technique in next year’s race: hands on handlebars, body horizontal to the bike, flippers in full kick — something akin to E.T. beyond gravity.

Topside, as the divers slipped out of their gear, Boyce made it official: despite their questionable team approach and early start, Pam and Johnnie Williams had won Discovery’s 1996 underwater bike race. She also announced that the event had raised $100 for Mile of Hope.

As Outrageous IV headed back to Beaufort, the Williamses had that contented, reflective look of competitors basking in the glow of victory. “Nope,” Johnnie corrected, “we’re just watching the sunset.”

Surely, though, they had plans for some sort of celebration. After all, how many people can claim to have won a bike race on the bottom of an ocean? Asked how they planned to observe the occasion, Johnnie replied like you might expect a self-respecting Smithfield celebrant: “I’m gonna have a barbecue sandwich.”

Photos by Dale Hansen. For more photos of the race by Hansen, go here.

It was hard not to. (And drat the telltale look that signals when thought is finally occurring.) It was Monday evening and we were among 30 or so others listening to author David Herlihy recount the adventures of cycling explorer Frank Lenz. Lenz was a Pittsburgh bookkeeper who became caught up in the early stages of a cycling boom that swept the country in the late 1800s. He started pedaling a “high wheeler,” participating in races on dirt (usually mud) roads and tracks that might draw 20 competitors and thousands of fans. Begrudgingly, he switched to a “safety bicycle” — the prototype for the modern bike — when that style began to curry favor. In the meantime, he was honing his skills as a photographer, and in 1892 convinced Outing magazine to back an ill-fated trip around the world. That trip is the basis for Herlihy’s  “The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance,” and constituted the bulk of his talk and slideshow Monday at Quail Ridge Books & Music.

It would be easy to romanticize Lenz’s worldwide journey on this exotic new machine through lands of which, even in the 1890s, little was known. Easy, if you didn’t listen closely to Herlihy. The roads Lenz traveled were not paved, they were dirt, and often of the loosely packed or wet variety. Lenz’s bike alone weighed 58 pounds, and then there was his gear, which included a 35-pound box camera. Many of the countries he rode through had never seen white people, let alone a white guy on a two-wheeled thing-a-ma-bob. There were no maps for many of the places he traveled. Cash was the currency of the day, and some countries didn’t have paper money: Lenz had to tote weighty coins for long stretches at a time.

This was not cruising paved highways on an 18-pound, 27-gear touring bike with just a change of clothes and a piece of plastic. Still, my face betrayed a lust for adventure.

Beginning in the mid- to  late 1800s and lasting into the following century, a profound sense of adventure had captured the imagination of the masses. In the U.S. alone, the Iron Horse was making its way west, opening vast expanses of territory for exploration, if not personally then through the eyes of adventurers, some financed by magazines such as Outing to lure readers. And this thirst for adventure hardly ended at our expanding borders: Explorers such as Ernest Shackleton, David Lingstone, Percy Fawcett, Richard Byrd, and others were pushing into terra incognita. And then …

And then, it seemed that we’d explored just about everything there was to explore here on Earth. Space was the final frontier, and I don’t know about you but I’ve yet to figure out how to pack for a trip to Canis Major. In fact, though, just because someone else has explored a place doesn’t mean we can’t. Reading about a place, watching a documentary, getting Tweets from out in the field, none of it is a replacement for being there. Great adventures await just out our front door, and that was why I had that look on my face. Riding a bike around the world had already been done: I didn’t have a couple years right now to spare anyway. But there was a local bike adventure I’d been contemplating, one more than three decades in the making that now, with a short detour or two, was within reach.

Riding my bike on greenway from Cary to downtown Durham.

In the early 1980s, a 22-mile rail line running south from downtown Durham into western Wake County was abandoned. Later that decade a plan was made to turn the corridor into a rails-to-trails project, opening the former rail line to a variety of non-motorized traffic. Today, the American Tobacco Trail is all but a bridge (over I-40) and a mile and a half of pavement from being completed. Meanwhile, greenways were popping up elsewhere in the Triangle; as the assorted stretches of asphalt grew in length, someone got the idea that they should become one big ol’ greenway throughout the Triangle — “Circle the Triangle,” the notion was called — with the American Tobacco Trail at its core. Listening to Herlihy and being touched by Lenz’s sense of adventure, while at the same time realizing that I was no Frank Lenz, made me realize that save for about five miles of road riding at the start, I could pedal most of the rest of the way to downtown Durham on greenway, safely segregated from my sometimes inattentive four-wheel brethren.

The next morning around 11, thought turned into action.

Monday: Thought turns into action.

The following post on Team Bandwidth.com’s winning of this year’s Race Across America originally appeared in the Work & Money section of The News & Observer on Sunday, June 27. I’ve written more on the team’s experience here.

In 2004, Bandwidth.com had the kind of experience that sends shivers down the corporate spine. The Cary telecom company provides phone and Internet service to businesses, some of its own creation, some created by other companies that it resells. It got word from a supplier that one service Bandwidth resold was being discontinued. Bandwidth had 45 days to create and implement a replacement of its own.

“It was audacious,” company co-founder, CEO and president David Morken says of the challenge. “We attacked it.”

Sean Matt takes five on the team bus.

A challenge, Morken was to realize six years later, not unlike that of riding a bike 3,004 miles across the country in six days.

This month, a Bandwidth team won the 29th annual Race Across America (or RAAM as it refers to itself with acronymic license). The arduous race with its many obstacles was, in the end, the perfect challenge for a tech company that has been dealing with a constantly evolving market since it arose from a spare bedroom in Morken’s Park City, Utah, apartment in 1999. (Bandwidth.com moved to the Triangle in 2001.)

In 20 years, the telecommunications industry has evolved at breakneck speed from phones tethered to the wall by cords to services the Jetsons couldn’t have foreseen. Similarly, Race Across America is a two-wheeled sprint across the country – from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md. – in which cyclists ride around the clock, battling electrical storms, blazing heat, dust devils and the demons inherent to riding through the endless Great Plains at 3 in the morning.

Morken, 43, has a long résumé of epic competition, including the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii (swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, then run a marathon), and the Wasatch 100 Ultramarathon (a 100-mile foot race). So it wasn’t surprising when he started thinking of Race Across America five years ago. He began preparation for the race two years ago after reading an article about three-time solo winner Wolfgang Fasching.

Joe Parke on the bike.

Morken opted to race as a team, for two reasons. One, the company’s fitness culture – employees get an hour and a half for lunch and are encouraged to join an active intramural program as well at a location across Weston Parkway from Umstead State Park – has helped attract some formidable cycling teammates: General counsel John Murdock, 46, is a Category 1 bike racer (one level below pro); director of strategic sales Joe Parke, 34, races in a variety of USA Cycling events; and Sean Matt, 43, a Seattle-based adviser to Bandwidth.com, is a Category 3 racer.

Morken also recognized the race’s team-building potential.

While the cyclists were racing across America, Bandwidth.com’s roughly 175 employees in Cary would be charged with meeting a fitness challenge of their own. A point system was set up offering employees an equivalent number of miles for a variety of activities. Play volleyball or basketball for an hour, for example, earn 10 miles. If the folks back home could best the mileage logged on the road by Team Bandwidth.com, they’d get a day off.

The challenge began when Team Bandwidth left Oceanside on Saturday, June 12. “They beat us by Tuesday,” says Morken. (Bandwidth.com employees – more than 70 percent participated in the challenge – would log more than 6,000 equivalent miles.)

“It was like our own little Amazing Race back here,” says Lisa Mangini, an analyst with the company. “First thing every morning we’d check the Web sites to see how they were doing. It really got everyone motivated.”

John Murdock, leading a support car uphill.

Operations manager Jerry Jeske says the cyclist’s competitive zeal was contagious.

“The feeling was, ‘Let’s not just match ‘em — let’s accelerate and really beat ‘em’,” says Jeske, who topped the employee leader board with 335 equivalent miles, doing four workouts a day during the challenge.

Meanwhile, the race was good test of Team Bandwidth.com’s strategic nimbleness.

Initially, the plan was for all four riders to share 30-minute pulls. That is, Matt would ride for 30 minutes, then pass the baton to Morken, who would ride for 30 minutes before handing off to Murdock, and so on. But it wasn’t long after Matt left Oceanside that the team saw a problem: its closest competitor was rotating riders every 15 minutes, which provided a huge advantage on the hills immediately outside town. With shorter pulls, the competition could push harder, go faster.

“Even though we were at the beginning of a 3,000-mile race, it sounds insane, but we had to react,” says Morken.

Team Bandwidth switched to 20-minute pulls, which they stayed with for much of the rest of the race, through a hailstorm on Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado, through a two-hour dust storm that followed on the plains. For six days, 3 hours and 9 minutes, each team member’s routine went pretty much like this: Ride for 20 minutes, get off the bike and into the team bus and down 300 to 500 calories (power gels and bars initially, PBJs and other “regular food” when their digestive systems rebelled), sleep for 20 minutes, repeat.

“I slept about six hours total during the week,” says Murdock.

Due as much, perhaps, to their ability to adapt on the fly honed in the telecom industry as to their physical prowess, Team Bandwidth.com rolled into Annapolis at 8:15 on the evening of June 18, more than four hours ahead of its nearest competitor in the four-person team division. Morken credits the victory to that decision moments after the race began to alter their game plan.

“We built our margin of victory at the beginning of the race,” he says.

Sweet as the victory was, Morken is hopeful that the experience will have a lasting impact on the company. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

Upon their return to the office on Monday, Morken, Murdock and Parke said they were uniformly greeted in the halls with congratulations, followed quickly by one question.

“What’s next?”

• Top speed achieved during RAAM: 60 mph, by John Murdock descending the “Glass Elevator” near Lake Henshaw, Calif. It’s a stretch of road that drops 3,000 vertical feet in 10 miles.
• Lowest point on the race: 189 feet below sea level, in the Salton Sea (which is where the 10-mile descent down the Glass Elevator winds up).
• Team Bandwidth.com’s average speed during the race: 20.42 mph.
• RAAM race registration fee for a 4-person team: $7,745.
• RAAM riders and crew must adhere to a variety of rules filling an inch-thick binder. Team Bandwidth had two infractions during the race, both worth 15-minute penalties: one for not reporting in to one of the 50 time stations across the country in a timely manner and one for a rider who inadvertently ran a stop sign. Of the RAAM officials patrolling the course, Kade Ross, Bandwidth.com executive VP/Team Bandwidth.com crew support member, said: “They’re like the state patrol. Some are in marked cars, some are in unmarked cars.”
• Team Bandwidth.com’s training for RAAM consisted mainly of daily 1.5 hour crossbike rides (“We’d go all out,” says company co-founder, CEO and President David Morken) at Umstead State Park, located across the street from Bandwidth.com’s Cary headquarters, and once-a-week, 24-mile lunchtime rides with a group of hammerheads from nearby SAS Institute.
• Morken says the company’s physical location was determined by two things: it’s proximity to both RDU International Airport and Umstead.
• Team members each had two bikes: carbon tri-bikes for flatter stretches, more traditional road bikes for hillier riding. Perhaps “traditional” isn’t the ride word to describe their road bikes: John Murdock’s bike for the hills is similar to the Specialized S-Works Tarmac ridden by recent Tour of Flanders winner Fabian Cancellara. (Murdock did not have the motorized version.)
• The team worked on aerodynamics before the race at the A2 Wind Tunnel in Mooresville (the same wind tunnel Lance uses).
• All the sweating wasn’t done on the road by Bandwidth.com employees during RAAM. While the team was pedaling its way across the country, Bandwidth.com employees were engaged in a competition back home. Employees were awarded a mileage equivalent for a variety of activities (an hour of basketball or volleyball, for instance, was worth 10 miles, a mile swam was worth 4); if the employees could surpass the riders’s 3,004 miles, they would get July 2 off. More than 70 percent of Bandwidth.com’s 175 employees participated, logging more than 6,000 equivalent miles.
• Bandwidth.com Operations Manager Jerry Jeske topped the employee leaderboard with 335 equivalent miles. He averaged four workouts a day, starting the day with a P90X DVD workout and ending it between 10 p.m. and midnight with an hour or two on the stationary bike at Durham Cares, which had and 8-person team in RAAM.
• Bandwidth.com employees get an hour and a half for lunch. They are encourage to use their lunch hour and a half playing.
• For most of the race, Team Bandwidth.com’s four riders shared 20-minute pulls. In hillier areas, they shortened their pulls to 400 meters. For three nights, they lengthened their turns to 2.5 hours so the racers could get extended Zs.
• Team Bandwidth.com had 18 crew members and four support vehicles, including a charter bus where team members slept and ate while they were off the bike.
• The team encountered hail climbing Colorado’s 10,863-foot Wolf Creek Pass, made semi famous by C.W. McCall.
• Most of the team agreed that sleep deprivation was the biggest challenge they faced. For him, John Murdock said it was staying biomechanically sound — that is, not altering pedal stroke, posture, anything that could cause him to slow or worse, lead to an injury. “It’s the little, tiny things that can turn out to be huge limiters.”
• What’s next? That’s the question the team faced from fellow employees upon their return to work last week. How do you top a 3,004-mile race across the country? Morken says he’s discussed the future with Murdock — Murdock shakes his head and smiles when the topic arises — but he’s not willing to publicly commit just yet. “You’ll be the first person I call when we’re ready,” he said following several not-so-clever attempts to trick a response out of him.

You heard it here. Or you’ll hear it here.