Haywoodja?: July is a Genius

Bike riding is sweet and warm in July. How brilliant is the warmest month of the year!

Photo by Michael Boyes. The start of the raddest super D from Reddish Knob

Tour de Burg

2014 Tour de Burg

As I get a little older, I've become sentimental about certain annual biking events. The Tour de Burg is one of those annual events that remind me the importance of committing to a full pull, pushing myself physically and mentally, riding with friends who share a certain kind of toughness and love of epic shit. And of course, flair is encouraged in either your haircut, costume , riding style and talent.

KOM, Dan Wolf has flair

Tour de Burg is the second of the Grand Tours of the Virginias. I wrote about the first Grand Tour, Giro D'Ville, in my last blog post. Tour de Burg is in it's 19th year of "slummin". Slummin' means that you are hurting, but you carry on. Slum and carry on should be next year's T-shirt slogan. It's just a matter of time before Slum hits you in a five day, six stage multiday race on some of Virginia's raddest terrain.

The only race that matters has their branding dialed

The format is 4 days on a mountain bike and one road bike day. This is a race with more of an "enduro" format: Ride as a group to the timed section. This is what Enduro should be...really riding together catching up and talking with friends and then laying your best effort on a timed section. Pleasure pace (PP) can be 30 minutes or 2 hours. The same with the timed sections...long or short.

The whole Tour costs $175 dollars and that includes all the racing your body can take, big lunch spreads and all the soda that you can drink, sweet t-shirt and yummy group dinners. The hospitality is big with Out of towners invited to stay at local's houses. Shoot, they will even give you a free haircut or show you their local lines (if you can keep up!)

Jerseys are awarded. Fooflandia took the Men's Leader jersey with a big smile and lots of poise. You can image being thrust into the leader's jersey on your first tour! Bryan Lewis went on to win Cat 1 National Championships in both XC and short track! Another Bryan, Bryan Fawley won the Sprint Jersey coming all the way from Texas! He knows how important it is to put the Tour on the schedule year after year. The KOM was won by the skinniest guy in the peleton, Dan Wolf. The hot jersey was the Super D jersey. Sam "Skidz" Skidmore was the fastest on the timed xc downhill runs. Probably one of my favorite days from town and it had the coolest ever Super D is the run from the very top of Reddish Knob to Timber , to the end of Wolfe. I was the Women's Leader out of only two women. I'm not sure if other girls don't know about it, or they aren't tough enough? It's probably that they don't have summer vacation time. And some pros can't handle all the down time because everybody waits for everybody. And lastly, Tour de Burg acknowledges the supreme effort of the biggest slummers and awards a DFL jersey with a ten thousand dollar check.

Photo by Michael Boyes. TDB podium 2014

The director has a sweet track suit and cool haircut

These leaders are slumming, but not as bad as you

You gotta listen to what the director says

Big congrats to Lindsey Carpenter aka Lizzy Clawprong on completing the Tour de Burg on her first full pull attempt at 19 years old. When you are raised by a very sane mother and an insane father, you get a girl who is grounded but hauls ass!