We ruled against making it a single day trip (three plus hour drive each way) and headed out Friday night with the idea of getting a hotel about an hour short of the race area. A little after eight we found a hotel in a location that it's still illegal to marry your sister.....or atleast it's greatly frowned upon and headed out for a beer. We figured the one chain restaurant would be a somewhat safe bet....fail. We should have known better when we followed three mothers all carrying young babies into the bar area, but no...at the bar we sit. A minute later beer in hand I start taking things in. Think of Cheers, except everyone here is apart of the same family tree...and that being a telephone pole. Even the "music" was screaming incest.....don't get me wrong I was raised on county music and love me some Bocephus, but that boy fell a little far from the tree.
I told the Wife to drink fast, cuz if I heard banjos I was running.
After living thru the night still being somewhat of a virgin away we drove.....quickly. Once we checked in at the race we found FatMarc who had a pimpy spot for us next to his team in the pits. Then what seemed like five minutes later it was time to line up for the lemans start.
Wifey and I were both doing solo, with FatMarc, Monkey and Kid Chris on "C3: Honey Badger Don't Care" throwing down in a strong three person co-ed field. Above Chris having that "I'm gonna rip someones legs off" look.....or maybe he was still in shock to find out he was running the first leg.The race started like normal (other then the guy that tripped at the start of the run and got ran over by everyone) with a hundred plus cyclist that can't run trying to get to there bikes as fast as possible. Having heard that there was a couple of spots early in the lap that could/would be bottlenecks I went out middlely fast on the run and entered the singletrack a couple of riders back of who I was told was the man to beat. Mistake, I should have been on his wheel. Because the next 6-8 minutes I watched as the two riders in front on me nearly go down every other corner....my rabbit was gone.
So not wanting to burn any matches to early (and not knowing the course yet) I got myself into a grove and just rolled at a good pace. The course was a blast....tight twisty single track the first few miles (other then the cyclecross dismount to go up a flight of stairs) that lead into a paved to dirt road to double track climb that was about a mile (that had a nasty little hundred meter kicker at the top) before entering back into the single track. The next mile to two was a little of everything, with some more climbing, a few short downhills, a couple of long mud holes that did wonders on the drivechain (but luckly a small creek crossing right after that washed most of the crap away) and a nice rock garden....when came the fun part, a teeth chattering downhill that seemed to get longer on each lap. The last two plus miles was really fast, wide singletrack with lots of passing areas....in a nutshell 8.6 miles on fun.
Knowing lap times were going to be around 45 minutes I did not plan on pitting after my first lap, which somehow lead into not pitting after my second lap. Just before heading into the timing shoot to start lap three I see the leader coming out of his pit, and he sees me.......at the same time we had the same thought, CRAP!
Out we headed for our playtime. He gave a couple of pushes, but I felt good and just sat a few yards back most of lap three. I knew I was in his head because he'd keep looking back for me every 60 seconds
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