Well, I have to say that this weekend turned out to be ok. It started out on thursday, and I have to say that I was freaking out a little bit. I was nervous about my bike, what tires I should use, how muddy the course was going to be, and other such nonsense. For some reason, I though that I would have car trouble for some reason. Instead if freaking out any more, I went to a friend's house to drink "a couple" of beers. I ended up staying a little later than planned, and got home around 230 or so in the morning. Woke up in the morning, and just threw some random clothes and camping supplies in the car, and took off. I got to Virginia at about 6 friday night, set up camp, and had some beers with the Dirt Rag crew.
Saturday morning I was able to relax a bit, and just hung out, eventually making it out for a 20 or so mile ride to check out some of the race course. Mostly we rode some fireroad climbs with one singletrack descent, and ended up on the pavement back to camp. I went swimming in the creek for a bit to cool off, and ate some free spaghetti dinner a couple of times. After dinner, it seemed like a good idea to unwind with a few pre-race kegstands. That certainly helped me off to sleep.
Sunday, wake up at 4:30, eat tons of oatmeal, bananas, cookies, and whatever else I could stomach. Line up for the race, way too far back, and proceeded to spin my ass off on the road for a bit. It is times like these that make me question riding a singlespeed, but I was able to keep up quite well, and actually pass a few people, especially once we startedto climb. At least until I had to start walking. I'll just give you a brief summary of the race. It was chilly and humid until about 9. I got my first flat 15 miles in. A ton of people passed me while changing said flat, and I lost some pretty good positioning, because it happened just before a very long singletrack climb, and I had nobody in front of me. By the time I started moving, there were about 50 people walking their bikes up this hill that seemed to be 5 miles long. I worked my ass off and managed to catch the guys I had been riding with before the flat, but it took me 40 miles. Lots if ups and downs for a long time. I felt amazingly ok until about mile 80. That is when I got flat number 2. At this point, I was ok. Then at mile 80.5, we have flat number 3. I flipped out for a minute, and fixed it. When I fixed the 2 prior flats, I didn't think that the pressure gauge on my pump worked. It turns out that it did work, and I had been riding with only 20 psi in my front tire, hence the 2 pinch flats flying downhill. After fixing flat number 3, the last 20 miles were pretty uneventful.
My goal: 10 hours.
Finishing time: 10:48
The 3 damn flats cost me my goal, but that's ok. It took me 12:38 to finish my last 100 mile mountai on bike race, so I will have it next year. Heck, maybe I'll even train for it next year!
Current Mood: 
sore
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sleepy
weird
drained
pissed off
stressed