Gentlemen's Race

If you haven't been there, Portland's filled with dirty, smelly hippies. Hippies and bikes. A shit-ton of bikes. Everybody rides a bike up there. Which is amazing considering it craps rain 3oo days a year. That miserable rain keeps it VERY GREEN...if you catch my drift. P-Town's the epicenter of progressive bike ideas and laws. Great bike lanes criss cross the city. Lots of hand-built shit by hispter guys rocking bigass sideburns and Euro caps. Alpenrose Velodrome is for the real fixed-gear junkies. So it comes as no surprise that they put together a non-sanction, hippy style bike race. It's called the Rapha Gentlemen's Race, and it sounds like a real good time. My buddy, John Howe of Team Beer rode this year. 140 miles with a start, a finish, and just a couple check points. Your integrity is the marshall. I've managed 140 mile rides a handful of times, and it was a long time ago. Pre-old man status. Anything over 100 miles starts becoming a long day in the saddle. It's just miserable sometimes. The mind starts tweaking and things start aching. It was my pencilneck that used to get to me. But it's such a great feeling once you're done. You feel alive. Like you've actually accomplished something. And the finish beers taste real good.

Read this if you want to read one riders recap...
http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1094

Check this for the 2008 race. My favorite part is at 3:48.

Rapha Gentlemen's Race - Sept. 6th, 2008 from RAPHA on Vimeo.