DUNGENESS — Al Piemme has finished a mountain bike race before with a couple of broken ribs.
“But I can’t ride with a broken clavicle,” the fat-tire grand master says matter-of-factly.
“I can just barely make it back to the finish line.”
That might sound like idle bike-racer bull from a 23-year-old, but coming out of Piemme’s humble mouth — he rolls his eyes at flattery — it’s as honest as his years.
He’s 73.
Pad-clad from colorful blue helmet to shin guards, Piemme pauses atop his heavily welded 47-pound Marrochi Bomber on the high end of his grassy Moonlight Drive back yard.
He looks like some kind of futuristic dude in shining armor in a yard overlooking an aged, majestic Garry oak and the New Dungeness Lighthouse in the distant bay mist.
Piemme’s ready to “catch a little air,” he says casually before piling down the hillside at full-tilt boogie, then flying off a four-foot dirtpile like it’s a measly street curb.
Oldest competitor?
Believed to be the Northwest’s oldest competitive mountain biker, Piemme is entered in national and international competitions through October and has no plans of hanging up his gear any time soon.
The retired San Diego contractor and his wife of 49 years, Betty, moved to Dungeness two years ago. Together, they built an expansive two-story home with maple hardwood floors.
“I feel better than when I was 60,” says the smiling, muscular Piemme, who took up road and mountain racing to keep healthy.
That was about 400 races ago.
The results of riding hundreds of miles a week were seen in a dramatic weight loss, he says — 195 to 145 pounds. Today, his 5-foot-10 frame symmetrically balances at 175 pounds.
In his 60s, he peaked at an average of 50 road races a year, he says, and admits to burning out on the stress of competition. That was when he switched to competitive mountain biking.