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“When it came to trying to beat the train, I had been putting together average speeds, I had been running in training rides and calculating that out the whole way to Silverton. “Going to Silverton was one of my favorite rides,” Tom said. He recalls wearing blue jeans and hiking boots and no shirt and eventually doing cartwheels down the hill when the bike couldn’t handle the speed. Tom developed his own 120-speed bike on a Western Auto Bicycle frame and said he once got it over 65 mph coming down old Shalona Hill. He had a slew of bike frames his father, Joe, brought back from a bike shop in California operated by Tom and Jim’s older brother, Bill, who now lives in Durango. He began riding dirt trails in 1963 and developed his own version of a mountain bike well before its invention. Before he graduated Durango High School in 1967, he was constantly tinkering with bikes. Tom, now 68, was obsessed with bikes as a young man. I’ve done close to 100,000 miles on the road, and most of those miles are on that bike.”
#Schwinn iron horse bike pro
I’ve given up a few of the original things like the Brooks Pro saddle to save some weight, but the bike still looks great and rides like a dream. That was a 1968 Schwinn Paramount, and I’m still riding that bike this year. “One thing that annoys me on the stories that have been created over the years,” Tom said, “is that it sounds like I’m just some kid who got on an old steel bike and rode to Silverton. He still owns that bike and rode it in the 40th anniversary of the IHBC in 2011, and he will ride it again Saturday at the 46th IHBC. He did it on the same Schwinn bike he used to ride to Silverton. He decided it was too early to quit and finished the ride back home. The storm caught him and he got clobbered with rain, but he made it to Pagosa Springs by 3:30 p.m. Tom said he made the return trip in three days, and did the final 160 miles from Saguache to Jim’s house in Durango in one day, racing a storm from Del Norte over Wolf Creek Pass.
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Before his challenge to Jim, who was a brakeman on the train, Tom had completed a ride from Durango to Denver with a friend, and then back to Durango. He was cycling 100-mile rides on a regular basis in the late 1960s. I went up a few times and just loved that ride.” “I keep seeing all these stories that say, ‘Oh, I went up every day and finally beat the train,’” Tom said. I beat you guys.’ It was pretty neat, and I got him a Baby Ruth.”Įven then, the train run between the towns was about 3 hours, 30 minutes, as it is today. I teased him again and said, “OK, Tom, whose truck did you ride in the back of. “I got to Silverton, and by golly, there he was standing there up by where the engine pulls up by the arcade. “I teased him and said, ‘Sure ya are, Tom,’” Jim said. Tom was confident, and Jim asked what he wanted to bet on it, and Tom said a candy bar. Jim, knowing the steep grades of Coal Bank and Molas passes and knowing the train tracks were 5 miles shorter than the road, told Tom he couldn’t beat the train. Jim asked if he was going to try to beat the train, and Tom said he was. Sometime in the summer of 1971 – they don’t recall the exact date – Tom rode up to Jim’s house and told him he was going to Silverton the next day and that he would wave to Jim and see him in Silverton. But they remember it as a light-hearted moment. The details of that initial challenge between the brothers have become the subject of great storytelling. Tom rode in the first race, which was won by Olympic cross-country ski racer Mike Elliott. It was that challenge that sparked the first IHBC a year later, as 36 cyclists set out for a race against the train in an event coordinated by Ed Zink, the longtime race director of the event. A bet was made between the sons of Joe and Mercedes Mayer as to who could make it to Silverton first. The tale is of young Tom Mayer challenging his brother, Jim Mayer, to a race between Tom and his bicycle and Jim’s steam-powered locomotive on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad line from Durango to Silverton. In 46 years, the story of the IHBC’s beginning has been orated numerous ways, but the founders haven’t forgotten the unpretentious idea that blossomed into a worldwide attraction. Facts get exaggerated and those involved become almost mythical as their stories are passed around. Versions of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic origin story have evolved over the years, like all great folklore. It all started with a bike, a train, two brothers and a candy bar.