Last one!

One more mountain bike race season is in the books.  Yesterday’s race was the 8th and final race in the Maine point series.  As I mentioned last week, I made it down to the venue on a couple of occasions over the course of the last couple of weeks to pre-ride and get the very technical course dialed in.  I felt that my preparation would ensure that I would at least be able to put up the best fight possible against some tough competition.  The Grillz Race is also the final race in the EFTA New England Championship Series so it means that the competition would be fierce with lots of the regions top pros showing up.  Last year (or was it the year before, I forget) Adam Craig showed up on a rigid single speed and schooled the whole field.

Fast forward to race day.  With my road bike on the stand with a broken front shifter, I decided to pre-ride the course one more time as my pre-race warm-up.  Over the last couple of seasons I’ve opted to warm up on the trainer with pretty good results but in this case I figured it would be helpful to get in that extra practice on some of the tougher sections of the course.  2/3 of the way through the lap, while chatting with a couple of other riders, I hear a horrific snap and grinding sound.  I knew it couldn’t be good and sure enough it wasn’t.  My derailleur hanger had snapped and the xo rear was wound up in my rear wheel.  Fuck!  Of course with coinage being what it has been recently, I had no spare hangers back at the car so I was more than a little bit s.o.l.  My only hope was that one of my teammates would have an extra with them back at the course start.  

The whole debacle happened right near (or so I though) the access road to the parking lot so I decided to jog out without the bike and come back by car and pick it up figuring that would be much easier than carrying a bike over uber rock terrain.  BIG FREAKIN MISTAKE!  After jogging the mile or so to the end of the course I frantically began searching for a replacement hanger.  Unfortunately none of my teammates had a hanger for me to use so my only hope was to rig the dos up as a single speed to try to at least get through the race.  So, with about ½ hour before race time, I hopped into the element an speed off to pick up the bike and here is where I realized my biggest mistake.  It turned out I needed to hike through some seriously rugged and swampy terrain to retrieve the bike.  Back to the element, I speed back to the lot with 10 minutes before race time and quickly grab my chain tool and sprint to where team manager Big Al was waiting to help me out.  I leave the bike in his trusty hands and sprint back to the car to pull off the knee warmers and long sleeve jersey, suck down a half bottle of HEED and sprint back to the tech tent.  

More bad news, with less than a minute to start time, Al informs me that the ss route wasn’t going to work because the chain kept trying to rid up the cogset and as a result skipped and popped constantly.  My season was over.

Or maybe not.  Just as the gun went off, Al offered up his bike if I wanted to try it.  Al is about 6” shorter than me and probably 40lbs lighter but I figured any bike was better than no bike so I grabbed his bike off the rack, ducked under the tape and proceeded to sprint to try to catch back up to the field who was already about 20 seconds ahead of me.  In my haste, I failed to adjust the bike in any way, including raising the seat and this would turn out to be the my final (and deciding) mistake.

I sprinted through the first lap, picking up quite a few spots.  The bike was way short for me and the seat was about 3” too low but since I was fresh it didn’t bother me too much.  I wasn’t as fast as I would be on my dos but I was at least fast enough to keep up with the mid-pack bunch.  Half way into the 3rd lap was when the ill fitting bike really started to take its toll.  I could no longer stand the whole time but when I sat it felt like my knees were going to hit my chin and I couldn’t apply much power from that position either.  I thought about stopping at the start/finish to adjust the seat but with a strict no outside help rule during a race, I couldn’t do it legally (all of my tools are in a seat bag on the dos so I was carrying nothing during the race) so I had to suffer on.  By the last lap, I basically had lost all will to live and was starting to cramp in the back and neck (what the frig is up with that?) so sort of coasted through, running most of the tech sections and finished up a disappointing 5th in my age group (no idea where overall).

My final time was about 2:10, for a race that usually only takes me 1:45-ish.  I still had plenty of gas left in the tank but without being able to ride the tech sections I had no way to access it.  This race will definitely go into the annals of learning races.  Some things I learned: 1.  Always bring an extra derailleur hanger with you.  2.  If you borrow a bike, adjust it before setting off.  3.  If you have a mechanical out on the trail, bring the damn bike out with you.