AllOtsego People

Coop group to take on biking challenge

By GREG KLEIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

A group of Otsego County residents have been training for the ride of their lives in the Leadville 100 MTB.

The annual “race across the sky” in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado, is considered one of the most grueling endurance races in the world. Whether people do the ultramarathon or the mountain bike race, the competitors are embarking on a challenge that breaks even top athletes.

However, that knowledge isn’t going to stop Worcester native Chad Althiser and Cooperstown natives Ryan Miosek and Matt Grady, who have all qualified for the mid-August race and are all training under Althiser’s guidance.

“We grew up in the woods around here, so it makes sense our attempts to continue to be athletes would be outside,” Miosek said.

“And even going back to our days as college athletes playing soccer, if you think about it, we were training to be endurance athletes,” Grady said.

The trio qualified for the Leadville by finishing a 100-mile race. Anyone who finished in a qualifying time of eight hours or less would get a chip to place in the Leadville lottery.

“All three of us won a spot,” Grady said.

“We were kind of competing against ourselves,” Grady said. “It is a fun thing. It is a personal thing. It is euphoric.”

The trio has mostly been training for Leadville, but Grady and his family, including his 11-year-old son Gavin and wife Kara,  participated in a family event in Maine.

“As a family, we have come together, Gavin and Kara and I, as a team,” he said. “It is not easy, and we have complicated our relationship at times, but we are also having a lot of fun. We’ve been doing stuff outside as a family. That’s the really cool thing.”

“He’s been out there doing it and all I have been doing is training,” Miosek said.

Grady said neither group could have the fun and success they are having without the help of Althiser and also Mike Reynolds of Woodland Cycles in Milford.

Grady said he and Otsego Land Trust Outreach Coordinator Marcie Foster are working on an endurance race for the local foothills, perhaps centered around Panther Mountain, near Fly Creek, which features great views of Canadarago Lake.

Bringing their new passion home to Otsego would dovetail nicely with the county’s push to market its outdoors. Otsego 2000 and the OLT have teamed up to present all of the outdoor activities on otsegooutdoors.org and the company that markets Otsego County’s tourism efforts, Destination Marketing, has stepped up its promotions of outdoor activities in its ads and at www.thisiscooperstown.com.

“They have been pushing the outdoors here lately and it is a great thing,” Miosek said.