National MTB Oktoberfest

The laundry is started, water bottles are in the dish washer, the fuzz balls are pasted out after four days in doggie jail...and it's snowing outside....really. Perfect time to do a race report.

So what do you do an hour before the start of an eight hour endurance...

A shot down pit row before the madness started...

The Shortbus (the pit box on wheels) packed full of food, water, fuel and bike parts for three...

After a night, and morning of rain we kicked off the start at noon on to a slick but fun ten mile course...and with no Lemans start....thank God, I run like a wounded three legged Hippo.

Harlan Price looking as cool as the other side of the pillow... Tinker...being Tinker, steady as a rock...
And then there's this smuck...
The first couple of laps were pretty slimy, but after an hour or so things started to dry out pretty nicely...other then the last climb that stayed nasty all the way thru.

Trying to clean a little crap out of the drivetrain...
I think this was the point where I realized they I was having a hard time clipping in (other then the mud.) I'd broke both my pedals, I love Eggbeaters...but I've gone thru about 3-4 pair this year alone....mostly I think it's because of my riding style (crappy) pedals are not meant to be pounded on roots and rocks.

The box of spare pedals seemed a little light when I drug it out of the bus...yep, empty. That's when I remembered I put them on the fixed gear a couple weeks ago...nice job jackass.

So back out I went with what I had and things worked out pretty well.

The cut off time for heading out on laps was 7:30...(my laps were in the 38-40 minutes range) on my tenth lap I was kind of milking it as I tried to convince myself to push harder in order to get back in time for an eleventh lap.

Heading into the last climb I knew I had 10 min's till the cut off...and believe it or not I'd convinced myself to head back out. I looked up and saw Wifey making her way up the slick climb, and yell up to her "are you going back out for a lap?" She throws back "we're done, it's 7:40."

I looked down and saw I had the computer on ride time, not the clock. Hell yeah baby, talking about a pick me up...that last half mile was a blur, the knew what was in the cooler.

So seven and a half hours and 70 miles later I threw an eleventh place in the books. Not to bad with the competitors that were there and my lack of training the past month.

Now it's time to get things back into gear...diet, base miles the whole works. Next years not that far away...and this year my not be done yet either.