Tom's story: Pocopson Road Race

BaseCamp athlete Tom Garg shared his experience at the 2026 Pocopson Road Race in Pennsylvania.

I did my first race today. It was largely unplanned. An email came out last week. I shared it with my coach and decided to do it. There were 45 riders registered for the Cat 4/5, and I was one of the oldest. The course was a 2.5-mile loop that we did for 20 miles. I checked out the course yesterday and found that they had chipped and sealed the steepest downhill and the associated uphill 4 days ago. I am not certain if that is something that they just do around here. It is when they take pavement that is just OK and grind away the top. It leaves a terribly rough surface and lots of loose debris for a while. Given that, I decided to do the ride on my endurance bike with 30mm tires that measure 32 instead of on my fast bike. The course had 100 feet of climbing per mile and was a single lane on an open road. There was a yellow line rule that limited you to the single lane. Crossing the line was grounds for disqualification.

The race was both very fun and very hard. It took me 3 laps to work my way to the front group. I managed to stay with that group for the rest of the race. I also somehow managed to not crash. There were crashes on the freshly chipped section. I ended up in 14th place. I never thought that I would be happy to finish 14th, but I was very satisfied with how the day went. I was less than 20 seconds behind the winner, and everyone in front of me was more than 10 years younger than me.