If you had the fortune of starting one of the countless races under the Appalachian Bicycle Racing Association umbrella, chances are you remember the pre-race speech. JR Petsko’s trademark tenor is made to cut through the low mumbling that plagues every starting block and reach all the way to the back row. He is characteristically meticulous and funny— that much has stayed the same in the five years since he dissolved ABRA— so CURB sat him down to chat about what goes into successful race promotion, the spirit of gravel and the overall state of cycling in the region.

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

So what’s new? What have you been up to since hanging up race promotion?

Long story short, the last year that ABRA was in business we were doing races at Mason Dixon Historical Park. The county took notice and offered me the position of superintendent for that park. It came with health insurance and a real paycheck and I didn’t have all the stresses that come with throwing races. I did that for about five years and then they made me the director of parks for the county.

I know you’re still riding a little bit. What’s it like racing e-bikes in the Grand National Cross Country series? Where do you think e-bike racing— especially in the GNCC— falls on the bike cycling/motocross spectrum?

That’s something that Gunnar’s talked me into. I’ve always liked to ride and suffer and all that, but I got myself into such a bad health position that it’s no fun to go out and ride my bike anymore, so I’m hoping that using an e-bike can help me to lose a few pounds and get back into shape. To me it’s not exactly— this is gonna get me in trouble— it’s not cycling really. It’s riding a motorcycle. I think they [GNCC] are in a really good spot for it, and I think a lot of people are starting to come around to the idea that it’s cycling. I don’t know, I’m a little embarrassed at times to tell people I’m riding an e-bike though. You know, I started riding mountain bikes in 1991. Having a motor on my bike, you know, I have some cycling friends that definitely still give me shit for it. 

Did you start in motocross? How did you get into cycling?

I raced motocross when I was young. When I was like 15 or 16, my parents pretty bluntly told me I wasn’t going anywhere with it, and they weren’t throwing any more money away at it. So I went to the old Whitetail shop when it was on High Street in probably ‘91 and I bought me a Giant mountain bike— a pretty nice one— for like $800 or something. I didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on dirt bike parts when I could buy a mountain bike, and it scratched that itch for me. Then when I was in high school, the locker right next to me was Rob Acciavatti. At that time Rob was racing at a very high level. I think he was on the Flyers [Scott-Flyers] team before he went to Europe. So in my senior year of high school I used to ride from Granville and Osage to University High everyday and I fell in love with it.

Did you grow up over there?

Yeah, so if you’re doing the Hilly Billy route, I grew up right across the street from aid station four. If you go up that gravel road right off 100 with that big shit ass climb, then you come down into those houses, yeah, I lived right there. My parents lived there, my grandparents lived there, my sister lives there. When I was 18 I couldn’t get out of my parents’ house fast enough. Now I live across the street.

So back in 1991 you were riding with Rob Acciavati. What else was going on in the local cycling scene?

I didn’t really ride with Rob much [laughs]. I think in our junior year of high school or something he was riding the K-Mart Classic here in West Virginia, so he was really on a whole different level. You know, I was racing the beginner class in WVMBA [West Virginia Mountain Bike Association]. I got to know Gunnar [Shogren] through Whitetail. He was still racing for Diamondback at the time I think. But yeah, the bar was very, very high. There was other people like Steve Haroulf and Jay Humphries who would go to races all over the east coast and just crush people. It was a weird little place to be in Morgantown. I mean it still is. The talent that is still here is crazy for such a small town.

Can you walk us through how you went from riding and racing to eventually throwing races? What was the first race you put on?

Yeah, so I’m pretty sure the first race I threw was a WVMBA series race. I think it was at an abandoned golf course in Grantsville. It was a really cool venue. I didn’t start that race. I took it over from someone else, gosh, probably 20 years ago. I did that one for four or five years and really caught the bug of putting races on. At that race in Grantsville we had a whole bunch more than just the race. We had bike polo on friday…

Bike polo in West Virginia?

Oh yeah. Yep. And we actually had a pretty decent crowd for that the couple years we did it. Saturday night we had a big ass pond jump. People would start at the top of the hill and just send it into the pond. Then Sunday we had the mountain bike race. 

Damn, that sounds crazy.

Yeah, it was. It was a really good time. There’s nothing better than gratification for me, and when you put on a race and you have a whole bunch of people coming up to you telling you how much fun they had, it just kinda drives you to do it better and better, more and more, and that is kinda what started it all.

So how did ABRA really come into the picture? 

That was after WVMBA and I parted ways. I’d have to look that up to give you solid dates, but it was around 2010. I don’t want to make it sound like it was just because of WVMBA stuff, because it was also out of necessity. Road racing was coming back at that point in time, and there was just nothing here. Everybody that was racing mountain bikes was training on the road, and people wanted an option to race road besides driving up to Pittsburgh and going to the oval. There were probably three or four races in Pittsburgh, but that was really it. I can’t say I was the only show in town because there were definitely a few other folks. You know, Mount Davis [Challenge] has been around, Gary Dugovich was doing some cyclocross races up in the Beaver area, there was some other stuff too. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but we definitely took it to a whole nother level with what we were trying to do.

ABRA threw so many cool races. I mean, there was the Steel City Showdown, Tour of Tucker County, some mountain bike races, I think maybe the last local cyclocross race to feature a flyover. Why do you think you were so successful in getting people to come out to races across disciplines? 

I don’t think it was me, really. I think it was a time in the cycling world when people wanted to be out riding and racing. The fun that everyone else was having was super attractive to people who weren’t there. I think the people who did the races had a great time, went and told their friends, and it just snowballed. I can’t take a whole bunch of credit for it. We just worked hard and put the races on.

Well, cycling has arguably never been bigger than it is right now with the bicycle boom and all that. Still, local mountain bike races, ‘cross races, even gravel races are struggling to get ten men to register for the expert class. What do you think is causing that disconnect? 

That’s a tough one, and I’m not sure I have the answer. There are a lot of pulls on everyone’s time nowadays. Like I told you, I really wanna ride again. I know I’m never gonna be 165-pound JR racer again, but I’d love to get out riding harder and more often. I just struggle to find time to get on the bike every day to ride. I think a lot of people are just fried because of how much stuff they have to do, and maybe that’s it. I don’t know, really. 

So what gave you the idea to throw a multi-disciplinary race series? The way I understand it, ABRA had a season-long omnium that spanned mountain bike, cyclocross, road and gravel races. Where did that idea come from? 

When we started we dabbled in everything real quick. We never did a real series until I think two years in, but I think we started with the Bruceton Mills ‘cross race, then did our first road race at Big Bear Lake. I’d say the idea came from my time with WVMBA and seeing how they organized the series. I guess I thought we could do the same for road and cyclocross as well. You know, now that I think about it, Gunnar and I used to drive hours to MAC and MABRA ‘cross races and I eventually just asked why we weren’t throwing our own. 

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

I think many will agree that the Hilly Billy Roubaix was your magnum opus. Do you want to say in your own words what Hilly Billy was to you? 

The model was simply showing people what we rode here. Gunnar gets dragged into all these conversations, and I don’t wanna make his head too big, but Gunnar took me to two Iron Crosses. I think in the very original course they had this one climb that was nowhere near rideable. I mean, you were grabbing onto saplings and pulling yourself up the side of the hill. It was crazy. And again, we were like, we do this shit all the time, so why are we driving three or four hours to ride crazy shit when we can do it back home? We were already riding crazy shit around Morgantown. A lot of it comes back to my motocross background. I knew all these stupid ass roads from riding motorcycles on them, so we’d go out and ride them, and that was it. It was just what we were doing at the time; we’d go out on our 'cross bikes and just— well, Gunnar will tell you this too— you know, they were doing the same exact shit in the early 90s on road bikes. I wasn’t there, but I know for a fact that they rode the same exact shit on road bikes.

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

How did you scout out the Hilly Billy course? I mean, some of those roads are really cutty, and a lot of them are destinations for local gravelistas and shit. How’d you put it together?

I mean, when you say “scouting,” again, we were riding that stuff years before we had the idea to do the Hilly Billy. When we knew we wanted to do a race, we just had an idea of what roads we wanted it to hit. And there were a few different iterations of the Hilly Billy. But yeah, again, it was just what we rode back then. Like, back in high school I used to date a girl on the other side of the hill, so I’d take Smoky Drain [Road] on my motorcycle to her place and back. Then when I started to ride bicycles, I didn’t think anything of it. So what if there were giant mud holes? You just wear a helmet. It didn’t seem like rocket science to me. It’s West Virginia, man, everything is bombed out here. It didn’t matter if a road was more bombed out.

Besides the inspiration from Iron Cross, what was the atmosphere you wanted to curate? I remember being a kid and coming from the city, I just thought it was crazy. There were pigs and shit, people playing banjo, moonshine at aid stations…

That’s so funny. That was my sister’s pig. So yeah, that was Lulu, who has since passed away. Or it might have been Lucy, who is still alive. She has a couple pigs. Tom Bloom, who is one of the commissioners for the county, still talks to this day about having to share the microphone with a pig. But yeah man, that’s me. I love to have a good time. We just wanted to kick people in the nuts and have a big party. Of course these days people are doing 200 milers and 300 milers and stuff like that, but we wanted to punish people and let them have a good time afterwards. I think that mix is what made it what it was.

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

How did you see Hilly Billy fitting into the broader ABRA series? Was it like the great equalizer between the roadies and the mountain bikers? 

Our course was really diverse. There were big sections of black top, sections of tar and chip, and then really tough sections where if you were just coming from a road background, you were really going to struggle. It was funny to see excellent roadies duking it out with excellent mountain bikers. I remember the one year that Crystal Anthony came as a pro cyclocross racer, that’s when the lightbulb kinda went off. I mean, she was racing worlds for the USA and she came here and just crushed it on a cyclocross bike.

She top-10’d overall, right?

Yeah, exactly, and that’s when we realized that Hilly Billy was the discipline for people who could do it all. 

So what do you think about gravel ‘specialists’ coming on the scene in the past few years? Do you think the gravel explosion lately comes at the expense of other disciplines like road and cyclocross?

Yeah, back in the day gravel was definitely a little more niche. I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but it seems like that transition was probably because of cell phones. I mean it makes sense. I can’t tell you how many close calls I’ve had with drivers on their phones. I don’t know. I mean I’m a cycling fan, so when I was putting on the Hilly Billy, I’d pull over and watch a pack of 20 guys come into Little Indian Creek, and it was legitimately like watching the peloton on TV. I mean when Jeremiah [Bishop] or [Mike] Mihalik or any of those guys would win, I used to love to hear their stories about what happened out on the course, like so and so attacked on this road. It was legitimately racing, not like a mass start time trial and “I’ll see you at the finish,” no, it was legitimate racing.

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

Maybe part of that has to do with the distance and the fact that there were only two course options. You mentioned those big ultra races. If I remember correctly, Hilly Billy only had two distances— long and short.

Yeah. It sucks to say this, but eventually we became a business. We started out with 72 miles, and that’s what it was. I can’t remember, but I think it was year four or five that we introduced the half distance. We were getting inundated with people who wanted to do it but couldn’t ride 72 miles. When we moved the start to Mason Dixon it was right in the middle of the course, so it was really easy to take the figure-8 and have them only do the first loop. I mean it brought a bit more money in, plain and simple.

That’s totally fair. I guess what I mean is that if there are three or four different distances to choose from at a race, it probably takes attendance away from all the distances and makes it harder to take seriously as a “race.”

The cap for Hilly Billy was 500 entries total, split between the long and short distances. That’s the max that I felt could be on those roads safely at any given time. I would have loved to have 800, you know, that would have lined our pockets real well, but it just wasn’t manageable. I can’t really speak to the gravel racing community now, though. 

So what happened?

Well we all say covid killed Hilly Billy, which it kinda did because we had things lined up to do year eleven before the pandemic happened and really killed it. But the biggest thing was the crash that happened in year ten. There was a huge crash that took out some of our friends, and my wife and I just didn’t want to be responsible for people getting hurt. Like, there were two people that had back injuries. We tried to communicate with those people throughout the injury because we actually cared, okay? I remember calling one of the guys while he was in the hospital and he was crying to me on the phone, telling me he didn’t know if he was gonna be able to walk again, and I was like holy fuck, man. So over the next six months I’m calling this guy and he stops returning my calls. And then me and my wife were just frantic, worried that we really fucked this guy’s life up. Fast forward a couple months and Gunnar calls me like, “You’ll never guess who’s at this mountain bike race getting ready to start!” I was just like, motherfucker! And that’s when the drive to put the race on really faded. We just didn’t want to be responsible for people we cared about getting hurt. Also, you know, I was notorious for rider’s meetings, and I was hearing from Morgantown people who knew how serious the course was that some people around them in the rider’s meeting were saying shit like “is this guy ever gonna stop talking” and blah blah blah. And that’s when I was like, these people don’t realize this isn’t [Unbound] with miles and miles of straight road, you know? This is some serious shit! So we just felt the change and realized it was a little bit different from when it was just a hundred of our friends having a good time. Covid kinda just kicked it off the edge.

So was that sort of the nail in the coffin for ABRA, too?

Well, really it was the full time job. So when I took over Mason Dixon Park, there was one dirt road through the 300 acres, and I really dove in to building mountain bike trails there, and that’s where my love went. I was losing focus of dealing with people who didn’t wanna hear about the severity of what they were getting into, and just kinda wanted to get back to my roots of mountain biking. I don’t know if you know this, but do you know the blue loop at White Park? That’s all me and Dave Light. It used to be a lot better than it is now, but yeah, that’s what I’ve always loved. So I get handed 300 acres with no trails, and I can do whatever I want with it. And it was still kinda the same thing, you know? I got to build something for other people to enjoy, but without having to worry about someone dying or something like that. We were just seriously scared that someone was going to die at the Hilly Billy. So ABRA died when I got that job, but Hilly Billy survived a year or two after that I think. Actually, I think I got that job, we did another year of ABRA, then ABRA kinda went away but we still did Hilly Billy, then covid hit and that was kinda the final straw. I’ll have to look it up but I think that’s how it went down. Interesting, I haven’t thought about this stuff in a real long time!

photo by Mike Briggs (@photogrif)

It seems like racing in the region is a shadow of what it once was. What do you think it will take for racing to come back to full blast? 

Same thing it took last time. When it was Greg Lemond, cycling went up. When it was Lance Armstrong, cycling went up. It sounds so simplistic, but it’s gonna take another American at that top, top level. You know, when it’s on the TV and in the news and stuff, regular people see that and it excites them to go ride their bike! I was there for the Lemond days and the Lance days, and I saw it. Maybe something else, but that’s definitely a huge part of it. I don’t care what your opinion of Lance as a person is. The influx of cyclists that happened because of him is enormous. 

I just hate when people roll down the window and say something like, “nice shorts, Lance Armstrong!” or something like that. It would be cool for a new name to get in the mix.

But yeah, I mean that’s exactly it. These people know nothing about the Tour or bike racing or anything, but they still know who Lance is, and they still think of riding because of him. That’s what it’s gonna take.

Last question: do you think if someone threw a local road race this summer, hypothetically, that it would have any sort of pull? 

I’ll tell you what, every race that we did, we never had a big crowd the first go around. All our races we really grinded for. Like, for the Morgantown Road Race I bet in the first year we had 50 racers. Then when we stopped doing it we had 300. It’s a grind, it’s name recognition. The community isn’t there right now to get 200 people to start a race in its first year. But you gotta start somewhere. If you get 50 people and they all go home and tell their friends that the course was marked well, the race started on time and the course was cool…

... and results were posted in one to two business days!

Oh god, can I share one more story with you? This was the first year we did the Morgantown Road Race. Jeremiah [Bishop] was there, Ben King was there, some big dudes were there. We had officials and all that, and at the end of the race the head official comes up to me and is like, “the camera died.” So we had 0 results. This was like, the third or fourth race I put on, and I’m over here as the promoter watching the officials just totally bail. So we just half made up the results. Some big growing pains back then!