Well...after everything was ridden and all the crashes had... we had a great race.
Lots more single track this year, which made the race totally more awesome, but didn't exactly play to Charlie and mine's strengths.. which is fine, since the single track was amazing.
The third day, there wasn't 1 km of gravel road, and only a little bit of double track. Talk about a wicked race.
The fourth and fifth days were the stages Charlie and I were targeting to do well, as there were long stretches of big-gear 2-up TT work. The technical last bit of the fifth day saw 4 teams ride through us, which was pretty frustrating. On the 6th stage, I had a super duper crash on the second major descent (nothing surprising here) and almost broke my front wheel. After I extracted myself and my bike from the ditch, the wheel was holding together but had a massive (but JUST ridable) taco shape! Thank goodness for disk brakes. Anyway, for the rest of the stage, I had to be (even more of) a total wimp on the descents as I was worried my wheel would disintegrate. We still ended up with a 9th place that day though, so we were pumped.
The 7th day was probably our best day for both of us. Charlie was on fire and I just held on for dear life. On the last major ascent of the day, we caught and past the Exprezo team (8th on GC) and at the summit, caught the Opus team (6th on GC)! The Opus team descended better than us and at the bottom, Charlie and I started to hammer the flat gravel road to catch up. We missed a right hand turn in the flagging and didn't notice it, since the trail connected again about 1km down the road. So we accidently skipped about 2km of single track (probably about 5 - 10min of riding). We had no idea it had happened. Anyway, at the finish, people were telling us we are 6th ?!? when we knew we were riding around 9th. About 7 minutes later the Opus team came in and we knew something had happened. The Exprezo guys came in and told us they watched us miss the right hand turn. CRAP !! So I went over and told the results commisaire where and how we missed the corner and in what position we were at the moment. They told us they would place us right behind the Exprezo team, since that seemed to be fair, since they are faster than us on single track and may have caught us.
At the awards banquet, we picked up our final 'Finisher's Certificate' and found out we got a 2hour penalty !! Yikes... tough enforcement. Oh well... great, long, hard, race!
Both Charlie and I are happy with the amazing level of competition and were excited everyday to 'be in the mix' around such awesome riders.
The Deagoat riders of Craig Stappler and Erik Bakke ended up a wicked 11th overall, which is totally awsome and they were fun to battle it out with everyday.
Our final place was 14th.
Some stats:
130 gels used.
2 race wheels broken.
550 km, not one flat !
Almost 2 tubs of Carbo-Pro used.
3 tubs of powdered gatorade.
4 razor sharp cycling short tan lines.
Lots more single track this year, which made the race totally more awesome, but didn't exactly play to Charlie and mine's strengths.. which is fine, since the single track was amazing.
The third day, there wasn't 1 km of gravel road, and only a little bit of double track. Talk about a wicked race.
The fourth and fifth days were the stages Charlie and I were targeting to do well, as there were long stretches of big-gear 2-up TT work. The technical last bit of the fifth day saw 4 teams ride through us, which was pretty frustrating. On the 6th stage, I had a super duper crash on the second major descent (nothing surprising here) and almost broke my front wheel. After I extracted myself and my bike from the ditch, the wheel was holding together but had a massive (but JUST ridable) taco shape! Thank goodness for disk brakes. Anyway, for the rest of the stage, I had to be (even more of) a total wimp on the descents as I was worried my wheel would disintegrate. We still ended up with a 9th place that day though, so we were pumped.The 7th day was probably our best day for both of us. Charlie was on fire and I just held on for dear life. On the last major ascent of the day, we caught and past the Exprezo team (8th on GC) and at the summit, caught the Opus team (6th on GC)! The Opus team descended better than us and at the bottom, Charlie and I started to hammer the flat gravel road to catch up. We missed a right hand turn in the flagging and didn't notice it, since the trail connected again about 1km down the road. So we accidently skipped about 2km of single track (probably about 5 - 10min of riding). We had no idea it had happened. Anyway, at the finish, people were telling us we are 6th ?!? when we knew we were riding around 9th. About 7 minutes later the Opus team came in and we knew something had happened. The Exprezo guys came in and told us they watched us miss the right hand turn. CRAP !! So I went over and told the results commisaire where and how we missed the corner and in what position we were at the moment. They told us they would place us right behind the Exprezo team, since that seemed to be fair, since they are faster than us on single track and may have caught us.
At the awards banquet, we picked up our final 'Finisher's Certificate' and found out we got a 2hour penalty !! Yikes... tough enforcement. Oh well... great, long, hard, race!
Both Charlie and I are happy with the amazing level of competition and were excited everyday to 'be in the mix' around such awesome riders.
The Deagoat riders of Craig Stappler and Erik Bakke ended up a wicked 11th overall, which is totally awsome and they were fun to battle it out with everyday.
Our final place was 14th.
Some stats:
130 gels used.
2 race wheels broken.
550 km, not one flat !
Almost 2 tubs of Carbo-Pro used.
3 tubs of powdered gatorade.
4 razor sharp cycling short tan lines.
2 comments:
Go work Trev.
I haven't ridden my bike in a week and a half, so there!
Rod M
I'm in awe as usual, congrats to both of you.
Mr. Kenny
Post a Comment