When it comes to massive waves, the Vans Triple Crown Series located on Oahu’s North Shore is considered to be the ultimate surfing challenge encompassing three unique venues — Haleiwa Alii Beach Park, Sunset Beach and the Banzai Pipeline.
When it comes to massive hills, the C2Cycling Series is a Triple Crown of its own — showcasing some of Hawaii’s most challenging cycling routes — featuring Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Kohala Mountain.
“It’s the Grand Slam of cycling events,” said Hilo’s Patey, race director of the series. “It’s three events that features rides climbing up the most beautiful natural attractions that our island has to offer.”
With success and great feedback from Patey’s first event in the series, C2Mauna Loa in September, Patey decided to cap off the year with his second event called C2Kohala –- a challenging climb featuring Kohala Mountain and the Old Saddle Road off of Mamalahoa Highway for a cumulative elevation gain of 8,871 feet.
“If you just look at the pictures it’s absolutely breathtaking,” Patey said. “The reason why I thought of doing it is because nobody has done a cycling series with this type of extreme challenges that riders will face.”
While Patey was focused on creating a challenging endurance climb cyclists like him would enjoy, He later realized the actual logistics of coordinating such an event would become a challenge in itself.
“This event wasn’t even going to happen 10 days prior to the race due to lack of volunteers and participants,” he said. “It was definitely heartbreaking to think that I would need to postpone it after all of the hard work I put in to get it going.”
Patey said that after receiving 25 entries during the days leading up to the event, he decided to push forward and ended up having nearly 50 riders by race day. Volunteers also trickled in at the last minute, but Patey still lacked the numbers needed to man all of the aid stations spread over the course.
“It was so hard to put on an event being so severely understaffed,” Patey said. “I appreciated all of the people who did come out, but there just weren’t enough of them. I ended up having to pull out of the race myself so that I could help point racers into the right direction. I just did my best with what I had to keep the race going. But that’s just part of the territory as race director.”
Saturday’s event featured two grueling distances — The Century (95 miles) and The Metric (63 miles). While riders began at sea level under sunny skies in Waikoloa and made their way up toward Hawi, the main attraction awaited cyclists as they began climbing the gradients of Kohala Mountain Road, where it’s beauty lies amid open ranch lands, ironwood forestry and picturesque views of neighboring fascinations -– Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Hualalai Mountain.
From there, riders were challenged with a second climb on the Old Saddle Road and were greeted with rain mists, fog and decreasing temperatures before heading down Waikoloa Drive and back to the finish line at Waikoloa Village.
In The Century event, Waikoloa’s Maxfield LaFortune, Oahu’s Tony Lang, and Keauhou’s Penn Henderson formed the lead pack and stayed together for the first 30 miles.
LaFortune, who recently broke the greater trochanter bone of his right hip in August from a severe bike crash, showed no signs of vulnerability as he slowly pulled away from Lang and Henderson up the steep and winding turns of Kohala Mountain Road.
Once at the top, LaFortune said he looked back and had thought he saw Lang and Henderson closing in on him from a distance.
“I was so sure that I saw them when I was descending Kohalas heading toward Waimea,” LaFortune said. “That really motivated me to keep going and keep on the gas even if I was going downhill.”
Once LaFortune was on the Old Saddle Road, dehydration began to set in as a key aid station had not been set up. But, word on the street has labeled LaFortune as an “animal,” and for a good reason.
When it comes to hardcore cycling events, LaFortune has the ability and tenacity to push it to the max –- just as he did on Saturday — hammering his way for over an hour without any fluids to reach the finish line first in an impressive time of 4 hours, 38 minutes and 33 seconds.
“It was hard for sure,” LaFortune said. “I got a bit dehydrated which had definitely made it harder. My hip is still not a 100% but I’m definitely looking forward to a strong 2015 year and I’d like to come back and do this event again.”
In second place was Lang with an amazing time of 4:53:12. Like LaFortune, Lang was in a near life threatening bike crash in Oahu two years ago that took over a year of constant rehab to regain his lung capacity.
Having nearly 30 years of competitive cycling under his belt in road races around the country including racing collegiately and for several professional teams on the East Coast, the 47-year old legal counsel for Oahu’s FBI squad returned to cycling a year ago and had nothing but good things to say about the inaugural C2Kohala road race.
“I thought it was a great race with having 2 mountains to climb as there is no way for the pack to stay together,” Lang said. “It’s just too long and each climb separated the field even further. Definitely the strongest will win this course. It’s a hard course, a great venue, big open shoulder, I think it will grow over the years.”
Dan Bintley was next in 5:25:20, followed by Paul Escobar in 5:31:25, and Richard Bell in 5:32:34.
The youngest to finish the 95-mile race was 16-year-old Malik Mariano in a time of 5:53:25. Mariano, who commutes 52-miles on his bike every day from home to Kealakehe High School, has seen big results since beginning cycling just six months ago.
“I joined the tri team six months ago and when I started riding, I realized that I really liked biking,” Mariano said. “What I like about riding is that I feel that I’m free and there is no one there to tell me what to do. I also like pushing myself and I like going as fast as I can.”
Volcano’s Todd Marohnic easily topped the field in The Metric race with a stellar time of 3:01:06. Next was Luis Montano in 3:16:47, followed by David Old in 3:20:13.
The youngest rider in the group was Mariano’s younger brother, 15-year-old Majdi, finishing with a great time of 3:23:31.
Kristen Old claimed victory in the women’s race with her time of 3:28:53. Lori Henbest was just a few minutes back in 3:30:16, and rounding out the women’s top three was Susannah Roy in 3:48:36.
With the second event in the C2Cycling Series in the record books, Patey is looking forward to organizing a competitive finale with his C2Mauna Kea race next May.
“I’ll definitely be better prepared next year with C2Mauna Kea,” Patey said. “My goal is to make each race in the series to be around 5 hours long – the more challenging the better. I’ve definitely learned a lot on what I need to improve and I would like to continue to offer competitive and attractive events to cyclists from all walks of life.”