I'm gonna keep this one short, I think...The morning of the Bone Bender 3/6, Mother Nature made her dislike of MTBers painfully obvious again...just like the God's Country race...yes, it was raining...again. No worries though, the radar was looking good and I was game to rumble in the jungle conditions be damned!!!
Even great race conditions at Clinton lake are tough, so why not make it ridiculous and add about 1 1/2 hours of rain to make the gnarly technical sections even more gnarly and technical...I wasn't too worried, I do have mad ninja skillz on the MTB!!
Anyway...I pack up and race the weather to Leadfoots house. For some reason, I was thinking getting to the race at 9:00 when it started at 10:00 was a good idea...not so much...that got us the greatest gift of all...sign up and line up...SUCK!!!
The race starts and the promoter had decided that a neutral rolling start would be the way to go. A side note...showing up late had us roll to the riders meeting late, which meant we were sitting at the back of 220+ racers. Shortly after that point the neutral roll out began, which was the opposite way everyone was facing for the riders meeting, which put us at the front of the race...a small victory...
The race promoter leads the field on a 90cc motorcycle on the paved section of the course, it had 2 left turns with fairly long straights connecting. After each left, he picked up the speed, by the time we were halfway down the last strait leading to the double track, he pinned it WFO and we were flying 25mph plus...this is where the "sign up and line up" started taking it's toll...it was painful!!!
I didn't get a chance to look at the trail conditions before the race. I pretty much knew it was gonna be greasy, fortunately I had the same tires from the race at the river trail on my steed and they seemed to work really well, good traction everywhere.
I settle into a rhythm behind Doug Long, an O.G. racer from waaaaaaaaay back, and think this is a good wheel to follow. It was for a while, then the little mistakes he was making had me stopping, finally I had had enough, passed him and rode away. After the first lap I was in the top 20.
To the pit I go. Leadfoot had pulled the pin on the race, which I didn't hate him for...I did consider it briefly, but decided to chug some water and go for round 2...
The second lap was mostly uneventful. I did a little back and forth with 2 riders in the technical stuff, where my little mistakes had them pass me and go away...this made me mad...and a hill that I walked up on the first lap came around and I powered right up it to get back on the wheel I was racing with...HOORAY!! That didn't last very long, there are some grinders shortly after the technical stuff and they rode away again...damn my crappy fitness!!!
Not much to write about after that. I managed to not hit the ground in 25 miles with a sizable chunk of that being greasy, rocky, root infested, technical singletrack...a tribute to my mad ninja MTB skillz!!!
I get to the last climb that lead to the scoring area, I get a minor cramp in my left quad. I shake that off, ride to the line and tell them I'm done...
I had about 18 minutes left to go for another lap...If I had I would have ended up at least 11th in class, maybe 10th if I had a good 3rd lap. As it stands I ended up 14th in class out of 28 in the 3 hour open division. I am glad I didn't go for a 3rd lap, it would have been torturous!!!
There you go, now you know.
E
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