Spun this round approximately 44,871 times last Sunday.Rotor squealed for about 42,744 of those.
"What could possibly go wrong?"Something *always* goes wrong, otherwise it would be called road racing. The weather was cool and dry and my legs never cramped, so far so good. But my new front brake, after much fiddling and tweaking the night before, started up its brain-numbing, will-sapping, death squeal about a mile into the race. And it continued to torture me for most of the race, stopping after some hard braking, only to return 30 seconds later or until I thought "Hey! It's stopped, maybe it fixed itself!".
Other riders would become annoyed and seemingly try to sprint away from me or drop back. One fellow appeared to drive right off the trail and crash into a thorny shrub in what appeared to be an effort to avoid the "Squealing Brake of the Apocalypse" (coming to theaters this fall, don't miss it). To those tortured racers I say, "Sorry folks, I know it's tough to be near my bike, but imagine having to ride the Squealmaster for 100k". I'll have to try some sintered pads and if that doesn't work I'm moving on to Voodoo.
"How bad could it be?"I am comfortable in saying "quite bad". The race description led me to believe this was going to be a relatively mild course...well as mild as 62 miles off-roading in New England can be. The reality was 6000' of climbing (according to another racer's wrist altimeter), lots of overgrown double track, and some Mensa candidates on ATVs taking down the course arrows. There was one particularly charming stretch along a newly graded section of power line. Steep. Soft. Ugly. That was one of many low points. While there was some sweet singletrack, my rough estimate is that this only made up 20% of the course. Creating a 100k loop in this part of the world is always going to entail a few paved and dirt roads to hook everything together, so I didn't mind those. It's just that there were too many parts of the course that were simply crap riding. The kind of things you find when exploring for new riding spots and later report to your friends, "not worth it, it can be ridden, but why would you want to?".
Particularly "fun" were the fast double track downhills with random tree limbs poking out at eye and crotch level and covered with luxurious undergrowth which obscured the numerous rocks, logs, and unconscious racers ready to catch your front wheel and catapult you into next week. Now don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but walking on your hands across a floor covered in broken glass and lemon juice while blindfolder is challenging too, I just don't want to do it.
Impressive performances and other factoids:
- As usual the nut job single speeders continue to awe me. On this decidedly SS-unfriendly course, just finishing was impressive.
- Elite class racer Michael Broderick won the overall, beating the next closest rider by a staggering 41 minutes! I do think I could beat that though, I just need a new bike.
- After 7:31:18 I rolled across the finish line. I came in 75th, which is pretty lame, but is better than 90th (which is what I though I came in when eyeballing the unsorted PDF results. Thanks the cky for the correction).
- Gobbling down Sport Legs pills like a kid with a Pez dispenser did seem to stave off any severe legs cramps, but by mile 48 my legs had imploded and my pace slowed way down. I guess a lack of training can actually slow you down, who knew.
- The Bride and Scorpion #2 came to watch at the various food stations and give me helpful advice like, "I really think you should stop stuffing your face with Power Bars and get a move on". Seriously they were great, and without them there I probably would have dropped out in the last 12 miles. Amazing how a little encouragement can spur you on.
- Apparently I wasn't the only one getting encouragement. After the race I found the Scorpion sisters at a table of EMS sponsored racers and it came out that at each food station they would wait for the volunteers to yell out, "water, Gatorade, bananas, PB&J" then they would yell out "wine!" and motion to their box of wine. No one took them up on the wine, but a few guys almost crashed at the offer.
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