Defining the Ineffable with Mike Jarosick
MMBC's Badass President
A couple years ago, I drove out to Mohican Lodge and Conference Center to meet a group of people I’d never met and committed to helping them build a new trail from Pleasant Valley Dam to the old Mohican MTB trails.
It’s a mild December morning and I walk up to the group, who has congregated by a truck bed. They’re older, wearing Mountain Hardware jackets and Marmot hats. Holding shovels and sipping steamy coffee. Couple younger fellas, too. A woman looks to be standing close to the older guys. They all look at me and give obligatory smiles like you do when a new face emerges into your crowd. One of them, who I later learn is named Mikey (his nickname), asks if I’ve ever done trail work. I tell him I haven’t.
“Alright, you’ll come with me. Are you the one who messaged the group?”
Yes, I tell him. In search of a cycling community, I had sent a message via Facebook to the Mohican-Malabar Bike Club. The person who responded to my query told me about the trail work day, and so I made my schedule clear for that morning.
“Great, welcome.”
He starts filling me in on the trail the group has been working on. It’s called “thirty-aught-six,” he tells me, because it juts off of County Road 3006.
“And the pronunciation is a nod to the caliber of the Winchester rifle used by the army from 1906 until the late 70s — are you familiar with this at all?” The statement started off encyclopedic until he realized who he was talking to — a guy who, from all looks, appears to be no more than 24. I’ve always looked younger than I am.
I tell him I knew it had to do with a bullet of a gun and he nodded knowingly.
“Well, we’ve been working on getting this trail blazed for the last 10 years or so, to have the original loop connect to here,” he gestured toward the Mohican Lodge and Conference Center, a “resort” built in 1974 on the banks of the artificially created Pleasant Hill Lake. The rustic building gives guests an outdoor pool and access to the recreational opportunities throughout Mohican State Park’s thousands of wooded acres.
Mikey, I learn later, was not part of the original dirtbag cross-country mountain bikers who blazed the Mohican MTB trails. He came a few years later. But he’s been the president of the Mohican-Malabar Bike Club for a while.
I also learn later how much of a beast rider this individual is, after going on several rides with him and others from the group. My goal around that time had been to complete the Mohican MTB100, a 100-mile bike race through singletrack, fire roads, horse trails and gravel roads in one of Ohio’s most beautiful backdrops. I had been hit by an SUV while riding my road bike a few months prior — and the race seemed like a great way to conquer that painful part of my life.
I have a hard time calling Mike “Mikey” because I had a childhood friend who went by that moniker. I see it as a kid’s name, and so I feel disrespectful using the nickname. Disrespect is the last thing I have for Mike. He’s a friend. And he, with others from the group, helped me achieve a more realistic version of my goal. I completed the 100k version of the race, after he wisely encouraged me to tackle the goal in smaller bites.
“You’ll still get every bit of the adventure and achievement you’re after — and you’ll probably enjoy it even more,” he said during a ride a few months before the race.
He was right.
Meet Michael Jarosick, 64. He has lived in Lexington since 1999 and currently lives with two dogs. For the last 10 years, he’s worked as an urgent care physician. For the previous 20 years, he was a residency-trained, board-certified emergency department physician. Thirteen of those 20 years in emergency medicine were in Mansfield and Shelby.
How did you get introduced to the Mohican-Malabar Bike Club?
Two of my rock-climbing/ice-climbing/mountaineering buddies were into cycling and they influenced me to get started in mountain biking. I’d had a mountain bike for several years, but never really took the plunge into the sport. When my running career was coming to an end, it was time to plunge. I had been an avid distance runner for many years, but recurrent overuse injuries led to the discovery that my feet are not suited for the sport. The bone structure abnormality I have is called metatarsus varus. Sounds terminal, doesn’t it? It was diagnosed and treated with custom orthotics. I was able to run several more years and had some intermittent success, but it was never quite the same. About 23 years ago, I was running up the hill on Straub Road and got tired of dealing with the calf pain I’d been experiencing for a couple weeks. I stopped and walked home. I quit. It was my Forrest Gump moment in Monument Valley. I’ve never looked back, because biking gives me some of the same fulfillment and it is much more fun!
How did you get involved in trail building?
At that time, there weren’t any mountain biking opportunities in this area, so we would have to travel somewhere to ride. When I didn’t have time to travel, I would do training rides on my mountain bike on the hills of the paved roads in Mohican State Park. I met Ryan O’Dell there. Ryan, Steve Burden, and a couple others were engaged in the negotiations with ODNR at that time to bring mountain biking to Mohican. They eventually recruited me to help them build trail and join the club. I think they built the first 8 miles in 2004 and I joined in 2005 and helped build the remaining 17 miles.
Where were you when you first learned how to ride a bike and who was around?
My dad taught me to ride a bike when I was a kid in North Royalton, OH. Our yard was big enough that I was able to learn on the lawn so the falls didn’t hurt so much.
What personality attribute should someone have to be a cyclist?
I don’t think I can identify a common personality attribute that all cyclists have or need to have, but I think that all cyclists love being outside and love the freedom of movement. Beyond those things, there are individual differences in what we want and get out of cycling.
(Interjecting here for a minute) … I guess that’s one way of putting it. I think mountain bikers need to be bad ass. Here’s a quick example: Once, during a ride at Mohican, Mike had what’s called a subarachnoid hemorrhage. (When a blood vessel breaks in the brain and causes internal bleeding.) He knew it right away and self diagnosed it. His friends, Stephen “Rabbit” Yarman and Jamieson Giefer helped him get out of the woods and into an ambulance. Who knows what would have happened had they not been there.
Every year, to celebrate being alive after that pretty serious episode, Mike downs what he calls a “bloody brain shot” — and, most likely, goes for a ride.
What’s your list of bikes?
Mountain Bike: Santa Cruz 5010, 2019 model
Gravel Bike: Trek Checkpoint 7, 2020 model
Road Bike: RW Racing, circa 1994
I have some other cool mountain bikes built by Groovy Cycleworks and Grove Innovations. They are hard tails and I had to more or less retire them because my old lumbar spine needs full suspension these days.
What is the length of your last ride in hours and miles?
My last ride was a road ride between Lexington and Fredricktown (you were there). We rode about 46 miles that day in a bit less than 3.5 hours. Not bad for a January day in Ohio! All my rides are logged on Ride With GPS.
Describe the feeling that cycling gives you.
I get several kinds of fulfillment from cycling. The joy of movement, the feel of the outside air, the challenge of solving a trail obstacle, and the physical intensity of climbing a long, steep hill are among them. The camaraderie of the people I ride with, and share the enjoyment of cycling with, is huge also.
Thanks for reading, everyone. And thanks to Mike for taking the time to talk with us a little about his cycling passion.
Come back next week to meet Jason Clipse and Matt Simpson, the race directors for the Black Fork Gravel Grinder in Ohio.
Now get off your phones or computers and get outside for a ride, dammit. (But first, subscribe, like and comment and all that.)
Looks like Brain Snot, but I'd try it.....
Great article on a super cycling advocate!