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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: From talking mouths.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Every month or so, this podcast tells the story of one Yukon mountain bike trail. Then I fill the gap with short outtakes and teasers, which tend to focus on what various builders may or may not have done with garden gnomes. If you've been paying attention, that's not nearly as weird as I just made it sound.
For the most part, the podcast will continue to follow that basic format, but occasionally I'm going to hear something from a builder or a rider that tempts me to wander a little off track.
In my episode on Paul Burbage's Rehab trail, you may recall hearing this from Ian Parker.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Rehab. I haven't even tried to ride up it hard in years.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: And this is what you didn't hear the reason why?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Because the memories are so painful.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: As you're about to find out, there's a story behind that.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I don't see the line.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: I'm not sure.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Let's.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Let's try and push our way through the woods.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: My name is Anthony DiLorenzo. One of my favorite rides to do is to go up Rehab, down downtown, back up the Woodcutters, and back down Rehab, you know, and that's just such a cool little loop. That's probably the loop I do the most on Grey Mountain, I would say.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: You were never part of the Strava.
[00:01:41] Speaker D: Battle, though, were you?
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness, no. I'm not in the same league as those guys. But let me tell you, I watched it with great interest and I heard all of the stories of suffering.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Here come the horses for today's race.
[00:02:00] Speaker D: I'm Paul Burbage.
When it was first built, I don't know if you've ever been on Strava or follow Strava.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: I heard all about that from Ian.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: So my name is Ian Parker. At the time Paul finished, the trail was right around the time that Strava was becoming more popular and more people were starting to use it to keep track of their rides and keep track of segments and compare their times to themselves and then start to compare their times to others. So when Paul first finished the trail, he had said to me, hey, have you ridden it? And I made the mistake of saying, yeah, I'm the kom in both directions, which was just like poking the bear in the cage, because Paul immediately went out and smashed my time in both directions. Certainly coming down, because Paul's just such an excellent bike handler. It was no surprise to me the time he laid down. But then I thought, huh, I wonder if I could. I wonder if I could Take a few seconds off that climbing time, off the up time. And so I did, and that became kind of a back and forth. Then Pa would go out and beat my time, and he'd post it on Strava, and he would title the ride your move Parker or socket parker or something like that. And then suddenly, Josh declout showed up and just SM smashed our times, Blew both of our times out of the water, and they took on a whole new challenge at that point. Trifecta betting.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: Ian and Josh and I were going out over and over and over. Those guys have totally different body types than me, too. I was out in my league. One minute to post time. Approaching the 80s, Ian and Josh got.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Into a bit of a battle, Just.
[00:03:29] Speaker D: Waging war on each other, trying to.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Lay down the fastest time riding up Rehab at the time, which is ridiculous because it's a lot more fun to ride down. But as Paul pointed out, it is a trail that rides well in both directions.
You could ride it 30 times, and you will always underestimate how long it is. It's such a long trail. So you just absolutely redline for five minutes, and then you start to climb, and you realize that you're in deep trouble and you're not even halfway up the thing to the point that you get up to the last sort of couple hundred meters, and it's the most technical, and it's the steepest section of it. And by then, you've just got lactic acid in your eyelids, like you're hurting so much.
[00:04:19] Speaker D: I remember I'd climbed that thing, and it was like 10 minutes to climb all of Rehab if you're just going as fast as you can.
And I'd get to the top, and I'd have to, like, sit under a tree for 10 minutes. And Josh would sometimes climb it and not even go down downtown because he'd be so tired. He would just go down wood cutters because he didn't have the strength left to, like, hold on. There was a lot of near vomit at the top.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: At some point, you kind of look at each other and go, okay, this is getting a little too far. There's lots of other fun trails we could be running. I don't want to go going out and smashing myself on Rehab every time I go for a ride. Because, as Paul would joke, like, you get to the top of it, and you lay down for five minutes. It's kind of against the spirit of mountain biking in some ways that you really crush one segment, but then you have to lie down for Five minutes or more.
[00:05:00] Speaker D: Ian's a really humble guy. He probably didn't tell you the outcome of that war, but he.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: I think he suggested that Josh kind of wanted it.
[00:05:08] Speaker D: Yeah, that's what I would expect. But it was. It was Ian who won it. Eventually he put down some time, and we're just like, okay, that's enough of this.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. Yeah, No, I didn't get that piece.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we should actually check to see who's got it at the moment, who's got that. But eventually, I think it just onto other stuff.
[00:05:28] Speaker D: I think I have the down still. He took a few runs at the down. If he gets the down, I'll try to get it back. But the up. The up is beyond me.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: The truth is, you probably wouldn't be hearing about any of this if it wasn't for something else. Anthony DeLorenzo told me.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: I wish those guys would fire that back up. I think they've all reached another level. I think they could start knocking some sometimes down on that one. But there seems to be this detente. One of them is going to let it loose, and then it's going to all start up again.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Really? So this is six years on.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: I would bet on it. I would bet on it. Plus, the trail's faster now. It's burned in.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: You heard the man. The trail's faster now. It's burned in. In other words, there's no good reason for this uneasy truce to continue.
These guys aren't racehorses. They're warriors. And their rehab Strava battle won't be settled until they pedal through the pain beyond vomiting to the very brink of cardiac arrest.
My problem is I've never used Strava. I don't follow social media. I can barely receive a text message. But I really, really don't want to miss my chance to record an epic clash of flesh and metal with barfing.
So if these hopefully chundering gladiators ever decide to race their chariots again, someone do me a favor.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Are you not entertained?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Please.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Are you not entertained?
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Please. Call my landline, write me a letter. Come to my house.
Just let me know this thing is actually happening, and I'll be there at the top of rehab with my trusty recorder, a tank of oxygen, and some nice, refreshing breath mints.
Every Trail Tells a Story will soon return to its irregularly scheduled programming.
Thanks for listening.
It was a total slog. It was not pleasant. It just wasn't as good as the rest. I kept telling him it wasn't the right place to go to.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Damn.