The attached link basically describes my day at Warrior Creek. I was all over the trail, slow, and there was a lot of ups and downs.
To get to the chase: I rode 5 laps in 6:42 minutes for a 11th place finish in a class of 38.
Garmin says that I only rode 52 miles, but Warrior Creek says it was 65. I guess there is 13 miles of tight turns out there that Garmin can not keep up with. Garmin also says my average was 7.8 with a max of 165mph. My math has me at an average of 9.62mph, but I am just saying.
The trail was nutty muddy the first two laps. I actually pushed really hard in first lap and dug a pretty big hole in order to stay away from lap traffic. It paid off except that lap two traffic was even more dangerous. I wrecked no less than than 3 times on the second lap. Once into a girl who slammed on the brakes while going down hill, once into a tree around a banked turn, and once Superman style over a bridge I completely missed.
Lap three went better except for the fact that I wrecked into the same tree again. This time I managed to scrape my arm up pretty good, get butt raped by my saddle, and bang my knee up real good. Thankfully after about a mile, the pain in the knee went away. It took several miles for me to forget about the butt rape sensation.
Lap four the gear choice and tire selection finally started making sense because the trail was not slimy peanut butter, but by this time I was too fatigued to enjoy it. Next time I will remember that there is no place to get spun out on this trail. 48" is way too tall for me. I thought if I picked one 2" lower than Dicky I would be good, but no. Does that make me 2" less of a man than Dicky? I digress. Next time out there 45-46". I also decided to take the high line around the tree this lap and we did not meet again.
Lap 5 was glorious lap of celebration. I counted down every mile and looked forward to finishing. I am sure that every rider around me was greatly annoyed as I loudly announce the the count down at every mile marker.
Couple of things I noticed while lapping Warrior Creek on Saturday.
1. There was a little pot smoking sculpture at the top of a little grunt climb towards the end of the lap. Every time I would struggle to get to the top of this climb, he would meet me up there just grinning and smoking his joint. One lap I would laugh, the next I would cuss him for laughing at me. Well the final lap someone had knocked him off his rock and stole his joint. HA HA, who gets the last laugh now.
2. There was a mylar balloon less than 1/2 mile from the finish of the lap. This made me laugh out loud each time because it reminded me of the "Elated Balloon of Happiness" that Jonathan described at the 2006 Cowbell.
I have not seen any pictures of the race yet, but I am sure that in every one I will have snot running from my face. I have never had sooooo much snot during a race, it was just pouring out.
So.
It was a good day on the bike. Nothing like a little racing and pain to make you feel alive.
1 comment:
Good Job Joe!
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