Well said CJ. It was cool showing up at the race and having a solid group of good guys to race and hang out with.  Cheers to the syndicates quality control process.

The sport class course was significantly soggy, and within 20 seconds of the race start, I was splattered with a thorough coating of Aftons finest sludge. I looked up long enough to see that the rooster tail soiling every inch of my carcass was being emitted by the rear wheel of my good buddy Dan. While on a cosmic level he probably owed me that, there was no way I wanted to wear another seconds worth of his shite. I pinned it up the side line and before I knew it, I was on Ladric’s rear wheel and somewhere around tenth headed into the woods. Nice.  I hung with Ladric for a few minutes, but somewhere between the Bridge Loop and Shady Lane he dropped me like a bad habit and I only caught glimpses of him on the switchbacks for the rest of the race.

At the top of the Shady Lane climb I was feeling slightly hypoxic and downright dizzy. I began to question my logic of choosing to singlespeed the course. The trail surface was like riding on a sponge, and even flat sections required a solid pedal effort for forward momentum. Sweet.  Lucky for me, gravity is more than just a good idea, it’s the law. The downnhill into the Deepwoods Express provided me with some much needed recovery time, not to mention the comic relief of sport class machismos getting ejected off of wet roots into the woods and piling up on top of each other in the technical sections. I stayed out of the mayhem and actually felt pretty charged for the remainder of the race, considering my earlier state.

I held my ground, felt good, finished strong and rang my bell at every single spectator along the entire course.

Bike racing is fun.

Mike C.