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What is it?

The Roubaix is a 100 mile century race on a road bike. It starts in a little town near Baton Rouge, Louisiana and you ride through a mix of road, dirt roads, hell and then the spawn of Hell…which I guess would be like Hell Jr. You and your bike take a serious beating over various types of terrain however the experience is absolutely amazing. I tried to take note and document my Rouge Roubaix 2012 ride along the 100 mile course. Most of it’s made up but some parts aren’t. I’m going to wager you can figure out which is which however the absolute honest truth is that this was the toughest thing I’ve done to date.

Information on the Rouge Roubaix

Where: St. Francisville, LA
Type: Road bike century
Leven of pain: agonizing
Where to eat: The Magnolia Cafe
Alligators that sneak up and take off your leg: 2-ish (3 if you called it a crocodile. Apparently gators are haters when it comes to mistaking them for crocs.)

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The Beginning

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B'ham rider Alan was so hardcore, he did the RR with just one wheel!

I went with a group of guys from Birmingham, and one from Birmingham, England. It was fun getting to know more riders from our little Metal-assed city here in the great state of Alabama. We traveled down through Mobile, on over past New Orleans and into St. Francisville. When I stepped out of the car to go register, I realized I stuck out like a sore thumb immediately.

Why did I stick out like a sore thumb? Was it because I was wearing a mountain bike helmet for a road ride? Perhaps it’s the 3,000 mountain bike stickers on the back of my vehicle? Or was it that my legs are hairier than balding wooly mammoth (mammoths are still pretty hairy even with male patterned baldness) Nope. It was painfully obvious that I was the only person there not on a team and had no bike kit to show belonging.

It was embarrassing. Everyone there was on a team except me! I saw Team Fire Department, Team Pita Xpress, Team Locally Sponsored Bike Shop, Team High-End Charity, Team Discovery Channel and Team Ha-Ha-Ur-Not-on-a-Team.

I’ll admit. This drove me nuts. I was not on a team and everyone knew it and everyone was pointing and laughing. It was like not being picked for a Fraternity in college (and we all know just how damned important it is to be accepted into a frat where you pay dues to so you can have friends ). So in a fit of desperation, I got some duct tape and wrote a team name to show that I too, was representing a team. Scott would be one man wolf pack.

I went up to the registration area and had this conversation:

Me: Hey, I need to register my team.
RR: Okay, what’s your team name?
Me: oh…well see, I’m Scott and I’m against Doping. So I’d like to be Team Scott Against Doping
RR: You want to be Team SAD?
Me: yes.
RR: Seriously?
Me: Team SAD will rock this race. Do not bad The SAD

So Team SAD was registered and now I too in as a team.

The Beginning

I lined up at the starting line, the race coördinator gave us our countdown and a pack of 75 roadies (plus Team SAD…of who you should root for in this story at all times) took off in a pack. Team SAD stayed in the back and sort of took it all in. Team SAD would try to scoot and edge his way up the ranks only to be met with some aggressive riders also jockeying for the same position. One time Team SAD found himself in the middle of the pack only to find it extremely nerve-wracking to deal with nowhere to move and constantly having to worry about the person in front of you suddenly slowing down or a pot hole you didn’t see that would have been no problem on a mountain bike… but since you’re on tiny skinny little wheels…Team SAD felt pain at times. Team SAD hurt.

As the first part of the race continued, there were definite packs starting to form. Pack A which had the really insanely fast riders, Pack B where most folks resided and Pack C, which was sad (but not like Team SAD. Team SAD is awesome…. Pack C was just the people who were sad because their chain broke, tire has flatted or they just got a text that their new puppy just contracted Parvo).

The first 25-30 miles were smooth roads with a few hills (well, more like humps…Team SAD is from North Alabama. Team SAD sees a hill and laughs in it’s face while zooming up the face of the…hill. If hills had faces. Right? I mean Mt Rushmore is a hill, and there’s like four important folks on there like Tom Cruise or someone). Anyway, it was like rolling little hills and nothing too hard. Team SAD was able to stay with the back of Pack A – which made Team SAD glad.

Hell: part 1

Awesome photography by Michael Lyons

We made a turn into the first part of what makes the Rouge Roubaix famous…it’s hellish terrain. It was a loose graveled dirt road in what looked to be a glorified pig trail with walls of dirt on either side of you spanning up around 8-10 feet. You could hear the wind howling above but would never even feel it. If Team SAD was on knobbier tires, Team SAD would have laid down the hammer of skirting through this loose gravel. Team SAD thought to himself “Boy, this part of the course is just like a Cyclocross race.”

Team IAAHSPWMIYSS

However Team SAD realized he said that out loud and Team “I’m-An-Attention-Hog-So-Please -Write-Me-In-Your-Story,Scott” heard me say that. Being a seasoned cyclocross rider, Team “I’m-An-Attention-Hog-So-Please-Write-Me-In-Your-Story, Scott” (or, Team IAAHSPWMIYSS) said “hey! Great idea! I’m going to do just that!” And so he laid down the cross skills leaving Team SAD in the dust (among others) which made Team SAD, sad.

The dirt road section was about 9 miles of bumps, bounces and jarring of Team SAD’s back. There was one part where the road split and the wind had knocked down the sign leaving Team SAD not knowing which way to go. So Team SAD made a bad mistake, getting off the bike and fixing the sign to see which way to go. This led to two things:

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1. about 20 riders passed me
2. I got mud in my road cleats making it nearly impossible to get clipped back

When I straightened up the sign, everyone whizzed by and said “Thanks bro! Team SAD SUCKS!” And that’s when I realized I should just hang up the Team SAD bit because it’s becoming less and less funny each time I write about it and honestly it was never really funny to begin with but it sounded funnier in my head yesterday and this has turned into a run on sentence and go get my position back. When I hopped on my bike, I could not get one shoe clipped and I had a hill to climb – so basically, I was hosed for gaining any ground or momentum. I did manage to get up the rocky hill – but slowly. At the end of the 9 miles we were greeted by locals who were handing out water bottles. I stopped and autographed everyone of them because being bike celebrity, you’ve got to keep your fan base happy even if it means you’ll lose a little ground on the race. You have responsibilities.

Miles of Headwind

After the 9 mile stretch of dirt it miles it turns into miles of flat road. This would have been fantastic if I were with a group and we could draft off each other but it was just me and headwind. What is headwind? Well have you ever been in a strong wind and been almost knocked over? It’s sort of that feeling where no matter how hard you’re pedaling, you feel like you’re going about 2 miles per hour. This was what I experienced for the 20-30 miles (I can’t remember the exact mileage…I was too busy thinking about the next part of this paragraph) however the sites and views were nice. In fact the course went through this backwoods Louisiana area where I’m sure they film that HBO Tv show about the southern genteel vampires: True Blood.

Bill and Eric from True Blood

Hell: Part 2

I had been told off-road #2 and #3 on the course were worse than the first one. So I was already a little nervous however when I entered it, however it seemed to be pot holes and some rough terrain. So I did an eye roll and thought “oh whatever. This is nothing.” Then it came.

It was a long windy road up of dirt and loose gravel. Okay, sure, on a mountain bike (or a cyclocross bike), this really wouldn’t have bothered me as I would have gotten out of the saddle and powered my way up the hill. But in skinny tires and the wrong cassette on the back (the doodad thingy in the back that lets you change from ring to ring. I never know these terms. I just pedal), I was forced to sit in the seat and spin up it, slowly. (slow is a key part to this next part…which makes Hell: Part 2…Hell).

Swarm of flies.

As I started the hill, a fly buzzed past me. Then another one, and another one…and before I knew it…I had 1,000′s at least 20 swarming around me. They flew into my helmet, in my sunglasses, ears, and were constantly flying in front of my vision. Sometimes they’d just bump into you and fly off only to come back. This lasted for….EVER…and the slower I went, the more flies showed up…this was the worst part of the ride.

To make matters worse, the chert and loose gravel rendered itself to sand and mud. On skinny tires, this is difficult to maneuver through in fact in one section I lost my balance and started to fall over. When I tried to unclip my cleats from the pedals and catch myself, all that dirt and sand that had prevented me from staying clipped into my bike now had me stuck! So me and my bike toppled onto the ground leaving me to utter a very vocal “ouch!” And of course the flies all swarmed around me only to sit and mock me as I tried to get back up.

Where the Streets have no name

The next section was more road, more headwind and more rolling hills. Generally, rolling hills would not bother me but we were around mile 70 by now and I was tired. Every hill felt like a mountain to climb. I’d occasionally pass a tired soul also drained from climbing and I’d look at them sympathetically and say “HAHA! I’M PASSIN YOU, BITCH! AND I’M SAYING IT IN ALL CAPS!”

I love me some competition.

(these people later caught and said words too devilish to say here)

Hell: Part 3

I initially missed the turn off to the second part of the course. So I had to loop around and double back which cost me a few more minutes on the course. The last dirt road area was, from what I heard, the worst. So I was pretty damned scared at this point. I was tired, my back was aching, my calf was hurting where I fell on it (the calf on my leg not my pet calf – I decided that bringing my pet named Veal would have been inappropriate as he would have slowed me down a bit carrying him in my bike basket where I usually put flowers).

As I turned on the dirt road, I saw one biker sitting down and stretching his legs. I yelled “you okay man!?” And he said “uh…I’m like, stretching here.” As if he knew that I knew that he knew the part coming up was bad. But I didn’t know that, so I kept going. I should had done the same thing he did because as I rounded the corner, there it was….

…awfulness….

Nothing but up, loose chert and rocks and a biker in the middle of it cramped up with flies all over him (this actually is true). As I tried to bike past him I said in agony:

actual photo of zombie biker

“dude you gonna be alright?” And he looked at me with these wild colorless eyes and said in a whisper “craaaaaammmmps in my leeeeeeg. heeeeeeelllllpppp….” However what I heard was “haaaaay… bitten by a zombie and I’m turning any moment. You should run away very fast.” So I tried to hammer it past the poor soul.

It was then my leg locked up on me and then zombie biker came after me and I had to beat him down with a C02 cartridge as well as I was unable to climb the hill on my bike. So this was all kinds of awesome fun. I had to use the bike as a crutch and hobble up the hill losing lots of ground to the competition.

Oh, oh wait…something I was leaving out…oh yes. THE FLIES….AGAIN! This hill was much slower, longer and much more painful.

The last 15 miles

The last part was brutal because I was tiring out and the roads were pot holes, cracks, crevices and even the slightest incline felt like a multitude of effort. A strong group came by and I tried to stick with them but they dropped me because I wasn’t on a team…I’m sure of it..

The wind had picked up so my steady pace felt like 5mph, if that. At one point and time I had thought about attaching a sail on my bike, getting a eye patch and calling myself Jack Sparrow…at least that would have been less miserable.

But then we’d have to call this story the Rouge Aaaaarrrrbaix.

At the last mile or so, I was with a few of the fellow Birmingham riders and we all decided to ride over the finish line together. We rolled in right at fives hours and fifty-two minutes for the century. I never put a foot down except to refill my bottles (less than a minute) which is huge for me as I thought I’d have to stop and take a break. But as you can see from this picture below, you can tell my hard work paid off as I took 1st, 2nd and 3rd place at the Roubaix.

No photoshop or embellishment worked into this picture. This is exactly how it happened.

It was an amazingly painful experience and one I’d do again. This ride also helped me think about what pain and agony would be like on the Divide race and how I’d push through it. I found that even when I was dealing with flies, low water and lots of aches…pushing through always seemed to do the trick.

And…

Hey, did you laugh at this post? Thought it was funny? Then could I get you to consider maybe retweeting it or liking it on FB. The exposure is always nice and maybe someone will feel sorry for me and ask me to join their team.