Phil Gaimon’s as stubborn and tough as the goodr WRAP G glasses he wears to chase (and break) cycling records. Designed to do away with blind spots and fit without slippage, Wrap G’s don’t distract from the challenge, but rather enhance the ride. Just ask Gaimon, a full time professional racer for 10 years before he “retired” in 2016. These days, the Ohio native is still chasing—and bagging—sought-after titles for fun like there’s no tomorrow. You can watch it all on his aptly titled video series, “Worst Retirement Ever.”
What you might not know is it’s not just Gaimon’s drive, tenacity, and over 100 wins during his professional career that got him to this dreamy sweet spot of sponsorships and influencer fame that so many riders seek.
“I owe it all to the volcano,” he says. He’s talking about Mauna Kea, the Big Island’s storied dormant mountain, a mystical place according to Hawaiian lore. Not many have attempted the long ascent to its summit on two wheels, but Gaimon didn’t balk. He pursued its apex on New Year’s Eve 2016, climbing from sea level to 13,700 feet, pumping for 62 total miles for a recorded time of 5.14:33. It was his swan song ride before retiring from professional racing—the spin that he says was the “toughest, hardest, and best experience of his life.” Fun fact: Gaimon started that day with some real Hawaiian fuel: musubi, a.k.a grilled Spam over rice, wrapped in seaweed. (Who ever said carb loading had to be pasta and bagels, anyway?)
The Ride
Meeting a social media giant founder set the momentous ride in motion. “He was planning to ride up Mauna Kea and invited me to join him. His goal was simply to reach the top,” Gaimon says. Of course, Gaimon had something bigger in mind. They started early from the Kona beach, first dipping their bike tires into the water at Waikoloa Beach—a local ritual for good luck, according to an island guide. After breakfast, they left the sun-dappled sand behind. Snow-filled verges greeted them after a few miles. “We took off up Daniel K. Inouye Highway to Saddle Road—a 30-mile stretch at 4.2 percent between Mauna Kea and its sister peak Mauna Loa,” recalls Gaimon. “To climb Mauna Loa, you’d make a right turn from Saddle Road onto a narrow, beautiful path through lava fields. For Mauna Kea, you go left onto gravel. We’d already climbed 9,000 feet, but this is where it got interesting.”
The guide, who was driving back and forth to support the riders, had warned Gaimon that road tires and race gear wouldn’t be suited to this gravel-y section near the end. “He recommended I switch to a mountain bike for the final eight miles,” says the cyclist, who refused to bring two bikes on vacation. Despite Gaimon’s deep experience and powerful quads and hamstrings, he had trouble mastering that segment, where the road was obscured by deep sand and sharply rose at an 11 percent gradient. To get to the end, Gaimon had to do something unconventional: “I shouldered my bike like a cyclocross race and ran it,” he says. “Thankfully I had taken [my guide’s] advice and brought mountain bike shoes and pedals. Otherwise, I’d have been running in socks.”
Since the last few miles were paved, Gaimon got back on his bike and started pushing, but the run had depleted him. He made another uncommon move. “I resorted to something unheard-of as a professional racer: At 12,000 feet, I got off my bike and I took a break, sitting on the guardrail with my last bit of musubi.”
Back on his bike, against the odds, he completed his quest. “I got the title two hours in,” he says. To celebrate, the founder's wife and her brother drove up to the top with champagne and pizza for New Year’s Eve Mauna Kea-style (i.e. with mind-blowing sunset views of the sea below).
The Result
Just happy to have snagged the title, Gaimon reveled in the moment. “I thought to myself: I may not be in the top 20 in the world going uphill, but it feels like I was born to do this. And damn—I enjoy it!” Soon, word of his record spread. “It was the most ‘likes’ I’d ever had on social media.”
That grueling ride made him realize “there were all kinds of adventures to be experienced and shared, that I could use my fitness beyond just racing,” he says. Today, living his best life, donning WRAP G’s—or whatever goodr glasses the task demands—Gaimon continues to chase titles and inspire other cyclists, one ride at a time.
