Roan Groan Road Race
Category 4
Elizabethton, TN
June 12, 2004

by John Fillyaw (Reality Bikes.com)

This annual climbing and pain fest went off this past weekend in the northeastern corner of Tennessee. The course is about as non-technical as bike races come with two straight downhill descents and only one corner (two if you count the left turn we made coming out of the parking lot at the start) on the entire 30 mile course. That’s the good news. 

The bad news in the first two climbs that are about 1.5 miles and a little less than 1 mile each respectively. Both are challenging and would be the make or break point in most any other race. At Roan Groan, they’re not even a brisk warm-up for the 8 mile, 7% average grade climb to the finish. The final climb was rated as a category 1 by the UCI for the Tour DuPont back in the 90’s, and the course features a net altitude gain of 4,000 vertical feet from start to finish.

We started lining up at 9:00 and the officials strongly admonished everyone riding back to the start after the race to take it easy on the descent…more on that later. The 3’s and 4’s would ride together, and after about 5 minutes, someone attacked. It might have been effective had we not been riding down a long, straight, flat, and wide highway, but it really only succeeded in making those of us who elected to take a very abbreviated warm-up a little uncomfortable for a short period.

The pack continued together until the first real climb at about 10 miles. It’s a little ringer, and a handful of guys did fall off. Somewhere between the first and second climbs, we got into a brief shower. The second climb went about like the first but everyone was cutting everybody a bit more room on the descent that followed. I guess going downhill at 35+ mph in the rain is pretty much no one’s idea of fun.

The rain had stopped by the time we turned off the main highway with 5 miles to go until the climb. Some rollers precede the big climb, and I’m sure those who had never done the race before were wondering, “Is this it.” When we did get to the climb, the pain started fast…knowing that the suffering would continue for 40 minutes or so made the pain even more exquisite. Watching the leaders climb away was not fun, but I kept telling myself that most of them were 3’s (I had no idea if they actually were) and to “race the mountain.”

After struggling up the first half of the climb, I started feeling a little better which I’m sure had nothing to with the fact that the grade eases ever so slightly. Whatever the reason, I definitely caught a second wind and started catching, working with, and racing other guys. At one point, I actually picked up enough speed – 16 mph or so - to justify getting down in the drops.

Nearing the top of the climb, riders from the Pro/1/2 race started coming back down. The first two whizzed by at what must have been 40 mph on WRONG side of the yellow line. A third followed a moment later; he may have been on the right side of the road, but he was going way too fast. Immediately after he passed me, I heard brakes locking followed by the sickening sound of flesh and metal hitting the pavement and then a sudden “THUD” as he hit a car that was coming up the mountain. I didn’t hear the condition of the rider, but I do know they took him off in an ambulance. Guys, there’s a reason the officials told us to take it easy coming back down the mountain.

I finished up the race in 13th place spending much of the last 1.5 miles warning descending riders of the crash ahead. The result was a bit disappointing but better than I was expecting based on the way I felt at the bottom of the mountain. It was my best place there ever as a cat. 4, and my average speed of 16.6 mph was faster than any of the other three times I’ve done this race. Best thing of all was my wife was waiting for me at the top so I did not have to do a 30 mile warm-down as I have the last 3 years.

One final note, upon returning to our hotel room and starting to clean up my bike, I noticed that one of my water bottles was a bit out of shape. I realized that I had been drinking out of it at an altitude of over 1 mile and had closed it back up. Apparently, the pressure differential back down at 1,500 feet had caused it to partially collapse.

John Fillyaw battles his way up the big mountain at the Roan Groan RR.