Small and obscure events bring out as much passion as the more well-known ones.
The first thing is, we’re all basically the same. We all need food, shelter, air, someone to love us and for the driver in front of us to put down their cellphone to realize the light has turned green.
We have different paint jobs and different names for God, but we’re basically the same.
The first thing is really important. It’s a beautiful thing, even if it’s easy to forget. Of course, if we were all exactly the same, it would be boring. But, we’re not exactly the same, not even close. That brings us to the second thing.
The second thing is, the stuff we like to do makes us weirdos to other people. Your obsession with golf or ceramics or ham radio or comic books or running is incomprehensible to other humans. This makes life interesting. The beauty of the second thing is that it helps us find our little tribes. Then, often buried deep within those little tribes are even smaller, more specialized tribes.
I discovered “tribes within tribes” one winter in the Adirondacks over a beer with snowmobilers at the Long Lake Hotel. I’d considered snowmobilers one big tribe but was wrong. The guys at the Long Lake Hotel were antique snowmobilers – that is, riders of snowmobiles built before 1968. In fact, nearly everyone at the bar was part of an antique snowmobile festival. I’m not a snowmobile guy, but antique snowmobilers from all over the Northeast, finding their tribe and their own particular passion, can restore your faith in the universe.
There are tribes in our local outdoor scene. There are running tribes, cycling tribes, hiking tribes and triathlon tribes. They have their own clubs and races and events.
If you look closer, if you take out the magnifying glass, you’ll see subsets of all these tribes. Runners have trail running offshoots and ultra-running offshoots. Cyclists have mountain biking offshoots and ultra-cycling offshoots. Hikers have bushwhacking offshoots and on and on.
The thing I love about all these “tribes within tribes” is that they
all have their own pantheon of local celebrities that no one else knows about. They have their own vocabulary, their own culture and their own events tucked away on the fringes of things.
We have great events around here: The Freihofer’s Run for Women, the Stockade-athon, the Mohawk-hudson Marathon, the Troy Turkey Trot and the Tour de Cure. You’ve probably heard of most of them. But if you shine a light in the corners, those little tribes within tribes are doing their thing too. Usually smaller and obscure but with as much passion as anyone. Here’s some light and a spring preview of some of them. You might even find your own tribe.
The Rat Snake Triathlon: Anyone who knows triathlon knows triathlons are swim, bike and run. Heck, those three words are on the T-shirts, stickers and coffee mugs but that’s not how they do it at the Rat Snake. It’s a “reverse triathlon” held in Laurens, Otsego County, that starts with an 18-kilometer trail run, a 29mile bike leg with brutal climbing and ends with a short swim. My favorite part is that participant’s GPS devices often state the bike leg is longer than 29 miles because riders are often forced to zig-zag to make it up some of the climbs. theratsnake.com
The American Zofingen: They had me with the description: the hardest duathlon in the United States. This race in the Shawangunks begins with a five-mile trail run, then 84-mile bike, then 15 more miles of trail running. americanzofingenduathlon.com
The George Street Bike Challenge: Without Major Taylor, George Street would be a steep, non-descript little street in Worchester, Mass. In 1899, Major Taylor became the first Africanamerican to win a cycling world championship. Taylor used the 18% grade of George Street to train, so every year the Major Taylor Association holds the challenge to honor his memory. majortaylorassociation.org/events
Escarpment Trail Run: So, you don’t enter this Northern Catskills race, you apply to enter this race because there are standards and they are hard, really hard. Legendary runner Ambry Burfoot called it the Boston Marathon of trail running. 18.5 miles of brutally steep, brutally rocky terrain with 10,000 feet of climbing. I’ll probably never do the ETR, but I’m glad it exists, glad it’s local and glad there are people doing it. escarpmenttrail.com/bs/
Montreal Double Double. Most cyclists know what a century is — a single-day, 100-mile ride. The good folks at Adirondack Ultra Cycling double that century distance when they ride 200 miles from Schuylerville to Montreal in a day — that’s the double. Then, after a day in Montreal, they ride back. A double double. adkultracycling.com/montreal/hterns@timesunion.com