24 Hours

What a great time. I love to camp and I love to ride my bike, so this was a blast. We got a great campsite with some shady trees in Can-Am Circle. The Seal and I got down there at about 4, went for a ride, ate some turkey burgers, and chilled. Watched The Matrix Reloaded while waiting for chico and Kareem, Dave slept while I worked on my Neo impressions. We had a visit from the real Mr. Anderson, who was racing on a corporate team.
The whole team downed mucho Peets the next morning and the race was on, that run was a little crazy! Being the captain, I had the dubious honor of going first. I just goofed off and tried not to get run over. The first lap was a long line till the big grind, with the occasional yahoo trying to kill himself(always a him, ever notice that?) and others with a stupid pass on 10 cm of extra singletrack going downhill.
Myself and the Seal were the only ones to pre-ride the course, so we stuck to our motto of"start easy and taper off from there".
I really wanted to ride my singlespeed the whole race, but mechanical difficulties were the hallmark of my race weekend. One lap, there were 4 stops for mechanicals, with the last 5 miles ridden with my seatpost about 3 inches too low and no tools to fix it. I had some help from the Roaring Mouse squad, very generous of them, who gave me a spare freewheel after my old one bit the dust, but I couldn't overcome the seatpost problem without a bike shop, and had to ride the backup bike, a old Dual suspension that bounced more than Richs' van.
I think mechanicals were the hall mark of the weekend, I kept breakin' crap left and right, and just about everybodys lights went south out on the course. When they say burn time 2 hours, just don't be surprised when the light goes out @ 1:57 into the double lap. Unfortunately for me, this happened with 100 meters of single track to go, more unfortunate was the tumble over the bars and requisite losing of one's jersey pockets contents that ensued. The worst part was going back out at midnight to find all that junk strewn along the trail.
Most of all, though, we had a awesome team. Everybody hunkered down and had a good time, not one cross word was said. Kicking back at camp, rapping with folks from other teams, making plans for future races, meeting new people was the order of the day. We all raced hard, pushing our limits while having fun, and I am very proud of this group of guys, all of whom were new at this game. Pretty cool that we got 15th while goofing around so much. Even cooler that as of last night we were over 1500.00 in donations to the ALS Society.
I had the priveledge of doing the last lap, with clear instructions NOT to return with 20 minutes to go. I had a blast, carving the sweet singletrack leisurely, climbing in the granny, chatting with the last solo guy and a Bella in go-go boots, just soaking it all in. I probably took it too far, stopping for 10 minutes to chat with the Mice who were camped on the finish lap, while my teammates waited for me at the finish line. It was just that kind of a race, though, just a celebration of goofiness and life.
Already thinking about next year........