On Friday Q, Nate, Steve and I went to Nine Mile for some riding. We ended going out for 4 hours at the track. Nate had a few problems with keeping the rubber side down on trail 11. Q had some problems with his crank, as usual, on the trails. Steve wanted to show me a part of trail 1 with a more difficult rocky decent. I cleared it 2 times and on the second trip my chain ring got filled done on the rocks, I wanted to be a weight weeny and lose a little bit of weight in an effort to be faster. After about 3.5 hours of riding my chain decided to fail on me on one of the rocky climbs that we had encountered. Overall it was an awesome day worth of riding.
On Saturday it was off for Eau Claire. I went to the race hoping that I could be recovered from my 4 hour ride from Friday. Once I got ready on Sunday it was clear that the legs were recovered from the endurance ride. I line up and bs with some people and then Don said, “GOOOO!” and then it was off. My goal for the race was to hang with Fellows for the race since he killed me at the last two races. The start to this race is super fast and I tried to make some places up by cranking it for the lead out. I managed to make up some of the ground that I lost at the chute because I couldn’t get clipped in. I was sitting behind Fellows as we come out of the first section of single track. I managed to stay there for a little while then he got some people between him and I and then I started to lose sight of him. The rest of the first lap I was trying to minimize the damage that was already inflicted.
I was following 2855 for the rest of the lap and then once we popped out of the trail by the fence I put down some power to get around him and then all of a sudden I got passed by 2857 and he was in my age group. I thought that there wasn’t anyone else around us. So once we were by the start area I made 2857 pull me around but at the last minute before the single track I got around him and was leading in the single track. I tried to drop him in the single track, I was actually gapping him but then traffic caused me to slow down and then he was right on my wheel again. Then Shawn appeared out of no where I started to talk to him and found out he fell down hard just minutes earlier.
After talking to Shawn he informed me that I was about 10 pull overall and that Fellows was less than a minute in front of me. Shawn said that he would me back to the group and hopefully get in front. Once we got to the double track Shawn started to fall back and the guy I wanted to hang with was leaving so I decided to go with the competition. After I started to go I hear Shawn coming up on my left side and then I grab his wheel and then all of a sudden we started to reel in some of the competition. I didn’t want to look down at my HR monitor because I knew it was HIGH as I was hauling down the trail. Shawn managed to get me past 4 clydes overall and one of the was Fellows. So then Shawn got behind me in the single track in an attempt to let me get away from Fellows. I managed to gap them by a big margin. Then traffic slowed me down again, same old story.
All of a sudden Fellows and the three other clydes are right behind me. I wanted to beat him so I decided it was time to try and get some traffic between me and Fellows. So I wanted to make Fellows work harder to catch me I put my single track skills to use, any bigger down hill I would ride as fast as possible in order to gap him and make him try to catch me. So I managed to get a gap before the last section of single track and I then put two people between me and Fellows. Then coming into the finish stretch I ended up losing my temper at these two guys because they were content to just ride in to the finish. So I was yelling at them to go and then I managed to get one guy to put the power down and then I got around him and beat Fellows by 16 seconds.
Later
Heheheh. I got some nice bruises (with rock shaped marks in a different color of purple inside the bruise) on my thigh from that dump I took coming off the single track. Badge of honor, I guess!