Monday, June 06, 2011

The Big Ring Rumpus

You know what's pretty awesome?  Spending the weekend away with family, visiting, camping, riding and racing, getting home at 5:30 pm on Sunday, taking a quick shower and then going into the office until 11pm.  Yeah, fucking awesome.  At least the first part...

Wait, I forgot, I don't bitch on this blog. :)

Anywho, this weekend was the Big Ring Rumpus.  A true test of one's fitness.  With absolutely no singletrack and speeds hovering in the high teens, there is no hiding.  If your fitness sucks, you suck.  It's not exactly the most fun race out there but with the fitness test and the $2k in prize money (holy crap) available it's a good one to see where you stand.

It was also an opportunity for Marcy to toe the waters again in the novice class.  With our start times spread out per land owner's request it meant that we could both race and not freak out about who was watching the spud.  Marcy was just a touch nervous (like a hammer touches a nail) for the race but settled in nicely coming into the end of lap one with a small leaders group.  Unfortunately, there is a chicane section right before the start/finish line and the women in front of her layed it down and knocked Marcy off her bike and that was enough to form a gap between them and the first two riders. 

Just after the mishap, that's public enemy #1 in the 
orange and yellow picking her bike up.
 
Marcy rocked it pretty well from that point on, closing in on 2nd place going into her third lap (first place was waaaayyyyy out of sight and on her way to needing to move up to sport) but had a serious hip cramp for lap four and dropped two spots before the finish.  She finished strong and happy though so that's all that counts.  That and Brynna got to see that women can be tough.  Always a good lesson for a kid who cries at EVERYTHING.

exiting the chicanes
 

 

 

 
My race started much the same.  I knew I didn't have solo away to victory power on hand but I figured I could take minimal pulls, hide in the draft and pull out a respectable finish.  The expert vet 1 field quickly broke into two group.  The lead group of 5, including myself, and the rest.  I stayed comfortably in the group until the chicanes at the end of lap one when, wouldn't you know it, a CCB rider layed it down in the exact same corner as the woman did to Marcy in her race, forcing me off my bike.  That allowed a 5-10 second gap to form between me and the top three riders.  At first I thought I'd be able to reel them in but it soon became apparent that three motivated guys trading pulls were never going to be brought back by one moderately fitnessed schlub.  Eventually, after dieing a thousand deaths for a third of a lap, I was joined by one of the senior 1 men.  Nathaniel and I worked together for a bit but my earlier effort was taking it's toll on my not quite warmed up self and I ended up essentially sucking his wheel for 1 1/2 laps while I tried to recover.


Mercifully, in lap three or four, the second group caught us and it was go time.  I had finally recovered/warmed up and was ready to rumble.  It was a fairly motivated group (with 2 or 3 guys willing to work) so I hoped that we'd be able to gain time on the leaders.

Holy crap, I'm out of time.  Part 2 tomorrow.

7 comments:

Marcy said...

That race was all about endurance and it quickly became apparent that I need to get my butt out on the road.

Alby King said...

Speaking of butt. I nearly hurt my hand swatting Rick. Pretty sure he saw it coming - didn't budge one bit.

rick is! said...

I had no idea what you were up to. I just have a really tight bottom...

Dan said...

It now tommorow tommorow, where's the rest slacker

rick is! said...

it's right behind all of my other commitments...

Alby King said...

He's busy tending to a wonky house. Lifetime occupation right there

the original big ring said...

i knew that i should have trade-marked my arse (big ring rumpus)