Someday, I Want To Be A Mutant

Just to clarify, a "mutant" is actually a good thing, in the small world of bike racing. I first picked up the term "mutant" when reading some of the race reports of one of my friends, Dennis Pedersen - you can read some of those reports at the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club (SCCCC) Race Team Reports here.

So, just what is a "mutant"? Well, it's basically one of those guys that can rip off the legs of his competitors, especially during a longer climb up some mountain. In other words, an especially strong racer that usually makes his peers suffer during a race - and suffer a lot!

Dennis and I have often joked in our race reports about various "mutants" that we have both observed. In fact, two in particular happened to show up for one of our races, at the Giro di San Francisco - you can read my own report here and Dennis' right here.

Those pair of mutants I referred to in my race report are Kevin Metcalfe and Don Langley. Between the two of them, they win a lot of races, to be sure. And Kevin, in particular, is what I'd call a "super-mutant" - he's 46 years old, but you'd think he was fresh out of college - he has quite the racing palmares (that's like your resume in the bike racing world) - just check out Kevin's results over the last dozen years!

Kevin has also participated in the annual Mt Diablo Challenge hillclimb that is held the first Sunday of every October - and has usually placed in the top 2 or 3, with a time of about 47+ minutes - that's averaging more than 13.5 mph up an 11-mile climb that gains about 3400 feet of climbing - amazing!

Also, Kevin just placed 6th in the recent Masters World TT Championships held in Austria - he did the 12.5-mile course that gains 1400 feet in just 25:40, an average speed of 29.0 mph!! And he was only about 30 seconds away from 1st place! That's almost as fast as the pros go when they do time-trials in events like the Tour de France - truly a "super-mutant", as you can see!

As you can tell, I very much admire cyclists like Kevin Metcalfe - I'm only 7 years older than him, but I'm nowhere close to matching his abilities in the mountains - even accounting for my slightly advanced age.

So Kevin's a "mutant" (or, "super-mutant", whatever) - and so it amused me to no end when I happened to come across a race report that he wrote in the AMD Discovery Masters Team blog about a race he did this year - the Patterson Pass Road Race. Kevin normally races in the open 45+ races (meaning open to any category - and it's usually a bunch of Cat 1 and Cat 2 racers, as well as former Pros, who have simply gotten a little older - but not too much slower!). But for the Patterson Pass Road Race, Kevin decided to race with the Pro/1/2 crowd - it's just like the open 45+ crowd, but includes mostly the younger guys (the guys that *will* race in the open 45+ races, once they get old enough - like in 20 years!).

And why was I so amused when reading his race report for the Patterson Pass race? Well, here is a paragraph he wrote near the beginning of his report (you can read his full report right here):

"At the start line there were many Giant Strawberries including pro triathlete Chris Lieto. Also on the line was one of my old Sacramento team mates Mike Sayers and two of his BMC guys. And the usual crowd of mutants bent on making me suffer."

So I just had to laugh to myself - here's a guy that I consider a "super-mutant" - and he's complaining about the guys that *he* considers to be "mutants".

So I guess it's all relative, after all.

But, I'd still like to be known to my peers as a "mutant" one day...