Our annual cyclist only tennis tournament is only a few weeks away now.  Known as the “George Hincapie Invitational” in honor of his win last year, it has grown greatly in popularity and more and more non-cyclist are wanting in.  We thought it would be best to keep with the cyclist theme, so in order to qualify you have to be able to climb Paris Mt. in under twenty minutes. When you see the pros stopping the clock at around nine minutes you might think it’s easy, but for someone who never rides it’s a tall order.

Jeremiah, who worked for Columbia HTC this year, and Jared, a local artist, were up for the challenge.  Jeremiah has had some experience on a bike and he has all of the gear.  But Jared was borrowing a lady’s bike and wearing normal tennis shoes, not the best setup, especially with the wet weather we had today.

Obviously Jeremiah had been holding out on us as he made it to the top in under fourteen minutes, a very respectable time.  He did manage to get his heart rate up to 200bpm, so at least we know he was going for it. 

After seeing him finish we headed back down the mountain to see Jared’s progress.  He was going fairly well, but fighting the bike the whole way.  Sprinting for a few seconds and then almost coming to a stop. It was actually pretty inspiring to see someone push their limits so much.  He made it to the top in twenty one minutes, just over the time limit, but we figured he deserved a little leeway since he was in tennis shoes and in the rain.  Jared immediately collapsed in the middle of the road, but he had secured his spot in the Tournament along with Jeremiah.