Frigid Bitch 2024 - We turned it up to 11.
Coming off the coat tails of the wildly successful and highly celebratory 10-year-party of FBX, the race director could be heard sporadically during the remainder of the year promising in quietly ominous tones that FB11 would be diving off the deep end back into the land of brutal survival. She can’t control the weather (despite rumors), but she can control the course checkpoints - and the tricks to finding them.
With a 1 hour buffer between the digital location drop and the physical checkpoints opening, many racers snapped a quick route plan together and bounced out to whichever checkpoint they decided was top choice to hit first. One contender for that pick was the St Peter’s Cemetery in Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar. Riders rolled up to the cemetery gates, chatted with the costume-clad volunteers, waited for the clock to strike go time, and then - were told the gates were a diversion: the real checkpoint was down the steep hill towards Washington Blvd. Scrambling to the stampers, racers bombed down the unplanned detour chased by the devil himself.
Photos by Ryan Maine and Olivia Beblo
On the South Side of Pgh, a similar scene unfolded in reverse - scores of riders piled together at the base of the Pius St staircase and at gun time started climbing the cut up Brosville. No rest for the wicked - at the top of the staircase, checkpoint volunteers directed them up another, toward Monastery Ave. Finally at the St Joseph alleyway, another set of cheering drink-toting volunteers pointed them helpfully down a staircase - to Brosville, and a demoralizing 10-second ride back to where they started.
Photos by Himanshu Dedge and Alex Van Langingham
The local run clubbers teamed up with buddies in the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure to hype up racers down at the 30th St Bridge rope swing, usually a favourite summertime spot for young punks undeterred by how much the Allegheny River may or may not make you itch comin out.
The hand-drawn Frigid Bitch map is always, always intent on fucking up your day one way or the other, and this checkpoint fit into that bill nicely. You can’t trust it. You can’t always trust the volunteers, either. While POGOH had a station of friendly, helpful, cheering staff members at the bottom of Buena Vista making waffles and encouraging riders to keep heading up the cobbles to the top of the checkpoint where Bike Pgh staff blasted music danced along by their horse head mascot creature and screaming wildly as pretty much everyone shoved their bikes up the gruesome near-off-roady hill - the mischievous mid-way volunteers tended only to direct climbing racers to the critical turn in the road IF they chose to beast up the cobbles. One sidewalker kept climbing up Buena Vista - climbing and climbing and climbing only to be seen again a half hour later when she finally turned around, looking for the checkpoint finish, and hollered out “REMEMBER ME?!?!”
Photos by Monica Garrison
The prestige checkpoint of FB11 was the furthest outside the city. Racers took Spring Garden or East St - either of two long steady climbs - and punched up the final hill to Colby St where the urban farm of a long time Pgh fat biker-turned-downhiller-turned-body builder was tucked away in the mud and snow. Passing geese and goats, slipping and sliding and falling and laughing, riders toured their way to the backwoods where wild volunteers had set up a snake farm snack fire and camouflaged themselves in with the barnyard animals.
The closest checkpoint to the finish line was the trickiest to find - tucked on the pedestrian path along the upper busway on an imposing stone bridge over Kelly Avenue, anyone who followed the map found themselves gazing up woefully to the checkpoint, scrambling to mentally reroute to find one of the farther entrances to the narrow trail. Volunteers hollered down from above to help out, and navigating King’s Run proved to be a critical moment in the battle for the top spot on the podium. A Pgh Babes on Bikes racer zipped through back streets to find the checkpoint, starting with an edge on sibling team Unison Racing’s Acadia K, but lost momentum to traffic on the way back and the win slipped out of her hands by seconds, seconds!! when she slammed her manifest into the hands of the race director just shy of the top spot.
Photos by Keith Clouse and Fred Zelt
Racers sped gleefully down Hamilton Ave to the rainbow leopard print tent beaming outside the Wheel Mill, where volunteers jumped and shrieked and popped streamers in congratulations and pointed everyone to the race director taking manifests. Bikes were tossed on the metal racks outside en masse and finishers filtered their way through the park and up to the podium and after party.
Photos by Alex VanLaningham and Jason Furda
THANK YOU to everyone who came out to race! To everyone who appreciates how much work and dedication it takes to put this madness together, donates their time to stick it out in the cold or lend a hand behind the scenes, accepts that the volunteers might fuck you with you but they’re allowed, and lends out some grace when things fall through the cracks. Thanks to Tommy K for the phenomenal artwork, to the Wheel Mill for hosting us this one last time, to Two Frays for partnering up to sling a Frigid Bitch specific NA sour (my dream), to all the sponsors who pack the prize table, to all the racers who show up heart-on-sleeve regardless of prizes, to the Pgh cycling scene that brings the community spirit en force, to all the out of towners who have to navigate this weird city, to Nava who hauled a mega heavy vintage bike up all those stairs, to the junior racer (second ever) who gleefully reappropriated the word ‘bitch’ every time she greeted her mom for the following couple months, to the Pgh Babes on Bikes team that is shoring up the pillars of this organization, and obviously to all the volunteers without whom this would just be a cold ass day on a bike! <3
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