Racing at Swope is fun. Ive only ridden a grand total of 6.5 laps there in my life and its easily the best trail system around. 4 at last years xc race, where I rolled a tire off the rim, and then finished on a flat front. 2.5 at this years race when I flatted a rear tire and found the valve stem to be completely unremovable due to a huge build up of dried CaffeLatex. If only someone had a pair of pliers on the trail i would have been good to go. So my solid 10 minute lead after an hour of racing was all for not, yes I know Travis Donn was only a minute and some change behind, but he was a 6 hour racer. It was a pretty big bummer because I was having a blast cruising through the rocks and had just gotten through a bit of an upset stomach and was planning on trying to up my fastest lap of the day as the trails were drying out nicely. That will happen when you take down 3 gels and two bottles of EFS in an hour with the idea of feeling awesome the entire 3 hours. It took about an hour to walk back to the feed zone where I packed up and headed for home.
Did I mention the race started at the bottom of a paved climb, which was fun and sorted the race out nicely except for the fact I did get warned "if you want the spot you better not screw up" or something like that when I jumped past 2 or 3 guys right before the singletrack to find G-Wiz's wheel. From now on I wont screw around at the starts so I wont make people nervous about my riding abilities. I dont know how many flats that is this year, but its a lot...Ouachita, Sea Otter, BumpNGrind, Missoula, Swope, just to name a few.
Results are here.
Im going out to ride my trusty 3D that has had the same Hutchinson Pythons on it for 3 years, how could this be?? I gotta go do a load of start intervals, Then its time to get this blog caught up. Whens the next localish race????
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