After an hour an a half on the slippery, slidy, muddy trail I came into the pit area fr the 2nd lap. After some confusion on my pit crews part on what I would need, it was determined to fill up my 2nd Cambelback, take some gel packs and a banana and I was off. Right off the pit area I found Lunchbox there willing and ready as always with his camera.
14 Miles in and already looking like I am in pain. It started off pretty well, I kept my pace up and the trails were drying good due to the high wind and traffic on them. About halfway through i got hit with a rather large branch in which I think my arch nemesis the squirrels were chucking at me.
Ill get back at them one day. Also they managed to push some smaller trees down in front of the trail where I was riding, luckily I was able to avoid those and continue on with my ride.
Another major issue in which I had was that I hadn't trained for this race. Now that comes into play with my legs cramping up. I burned a lot of energy on the first lap spinning out and trying to climb muddy hills, so by the 2nd lap my legs were pretty burnt out. Although they weren't locking up completely like I am used to, they just refused to move. This resulted in me taking a stroll through the woods while pushing my bike. I did appreciate having the new and improved 30 gears install by John at QCB to run through, but sometimes gears are not the problem, it is the person. The terrian is much tougher than I have experienced here in the Charlotte area mountain bike and I just wasn't prepared. But then again when am I ever? That would make for a boring race report.
I was not alone in my leg cramping problems as there seemed to be a group of us in which made it up some climbs, walked others, and just rested. The passing and being passed made for interesting conversations. Finially, the 2nd lap was completed. I finished it in the same time as the first, 1 hr 30 minutes. Not to bad, at least I was consistant.
For the final lap it was pretty uneventful. The trail dried up and was getting fast, the hills I continued to struggle up riding and resorted to walking. As I was finishing up the 3rd lap, I saw Lunchbox again with his camera, lucky it was a good shot of me crossing the rock garden.
After that it was the home stretch to the finish line.
My last lap I finished with a time of 3 hrs and 50 mintues estimated. I did have time to go out for lap number 4, but my body just didn't want to cooperate, and I don't blame it. As I was speaking with a lot of the other guys, it turns out there were a lot of people not in shape and declined to go out for another lap. That definatly made me feel better. Although I finished a pretty respectable (for me anyway) 49 of 99 mens solo, some of my teammates finished better. The owner and fearless leader Bart did 40+ mens duo with Robert Mobley and won the division. Congrats!
I have some other big news about riding bikes, but I have my bachelor party to attend to starting in a few hours, so there probably won't be riding this weekend, but plenty of beer and stories. Ill probably post up some of the pics that the burrower took that haven't been uploaded to the F-Book yet and the news of the year (at least biking related) for me.
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