DEA's Fat Tire Fest wrap up

The mountain bike race season is wrapped up and now it’s on to CX season. The last race was at Bear Notch Ski Touring, and for some reason I just don’t have good luck there. I love the course, the terrain is great- but for some reason I just have bad mojo there. This was to be my first race on the new Rig, and it may have been its last. On the warm up lap with JJ I managed to go over the bars in a rather aggressive manner and slam the bike into a big piece of granite.

I picked myself up and went to remount and realized the rear wheel wasn’t moving. I figured I had either knocked the wheel out of true or it had slid in the dropout. Neither of which was true, I had bent the rear triangle. Super.

I remounted the wheel a bit cockeyed and got back to the start finish area and began trying to bend the frame back to a usable place. I still had some wheel rub but I could live with it, I got the rear brake to work and not drag too much and headed to the start. The race went fine but I was bummed about the bike and was sure that my slowness had to do with the bike not rolling well (which wasn’t the case). This was a TT format so it was good for moral to catch a few folks on each lap. I knew JJ was a minute and a half ahead of me so he was my target. I finally caught him before the final lap and we rode together for a bit and then he took a digger and I got a touch ahead of him. I was quite sure he was on my wheel up the second climb and I started to punch it a bit as he sounded like we wanted to go faster, finally when I was tapped out “he” passed me- it ended up it was Murph who had been on my wheel pushing me and JJ had dropped off the pace a touch. I tried to jump on Murph’s wheel and I was able to hang with him for about the next minute before I blew a line on a corner and did a bit of bushwhacking. Murph was now gone and I picked up on my own pace. All was good, only about a quarter mile left and I managed to drop my chain. Ok, I’m on a SS, that’s not supposed to happen! Total brain cramp, what do I do! Can’t get it back on, getting passed, there goes JJ- now I’m really mad. Finally I took off the rear wheel to reset the chain and then struggle to get the damn wheel back it due to the bent rear triangle. Of course this all took about a minute but at the time I was pretty sure I had messed with this thing for about 10. Jump back on and crossed the finish line with a not so hot time.

For the series I placed 2nd, 1st, 1st, 4th in the sport division. I had hoped to place at the top of the podium in the last race but it just wasn’t in the legs- I would have had to go significantly faster. Either way it looks like I’ll move to expert in this series next season- time to really get it handed to me!

Today is most likely a bike free day, unless there is interest in a night ride????- but I’m going to go play golf with my Grandmother- should be interesting as I haven’t played a round of golf in well over 12 years.

DEA out


ps- saw JJ riding in this morning, felt envy as I was stuck driving. For further humor- today it's golf tomorrow is the final race for the fall trail running series where A1 will kick my ass once again- he truly is a freak!