Saturday, December 10, 2011

Cold Crank Challenge 2011

A 29er! A 29er! My kingdom for a 29er!

Well the Y has been nothing but fun since I built it but today it met its match, at least with me riding it.  We were a match made in hell today for sure.  I think I may be able to take my work today and apply for a minor in Physics at PSU with all of the lessons I learned trying to pick 29er lines through the craggy stuff.  I can totally ride that line! **explosion**.  I guess from here on out if I want to go fast I need big hoops and no squish.

Luckily I at least got my layering right and surprisingly I was actually pretty comfortable during the race.  A few short moments where I felt like I was overheating and a few short moments when I was cold, other than that comfortable.  Can't ask for much better temp management than that trying to do hard cardio work outside on Dec 10th.

I rode the first half lap at the pace of / and choosing lines like I was racing my Redline.  And I must have looked like a complete spaz.  A local rider, Dave, told me I looked 'a little out of sorts'.  Thanks for being nice Dave but lets be honest I'm sure I was way closer to jack-ass than out of sorts.  I probably fell or dabbed about 126 times and finally decided this whole racing thing wasn't working out for me on this day and I slowed things up in an effort to not do something stupid and ruin my ski season.  BUT I did make sure to air out a little drop every lap where they had a photog set up.  I really hope I get to see some of those pics.  I hit it 4 times so at least one of them has to be awesome.  This whole thing was worth it if I can get a sweet pic of me tail-whipping a Y-frame. Ok fine there was no tail whipping but its still gonna be gnar (I hope).

 it WAS all worth it!

The fast guys just started lapping me as I was finishing off what I decided was my last lap (I did 4, top guys got 5).  Andy Gould came by and asked me if I was racing in the Duo Team division.  Which is a different way of saying "Why are you going so slow?".  But I will choose to interpret it as "Oh hey Kevin, I'm surprised to see you so far back in the field because usually you are pretty fast."

It's probably just as well that things weren't working out because the Y was starting to take a beating.  I cleaned it off when I got home but didn't have the gusto to really get in there to check everything out but I'm fairly certain the rear shock may have cashed in its chips, I believe both hubs are loose and probably need rebuilds, brakes were definitely all screwed up.  Oh well, it isn't likely I would be getting much more mileage this season anyway.  I'm hoping to be on snow exclusively any week now.

The race itself went off great.  Good turn out for Dec with about 50 riders in attendance.  Course was challenging for sure.  I didn't stick around for results or awards because of my lack luster showing but NEMBA Racing had a pretty good day with Shawn and Carl both in the top 10 (I think).  Lis mentioned this was over double the turn out from last year.  Good to see that MTB racing in NE is back in a big way, even in December.

4 comments:

  1. Nice pic, but are you sure that wasn't taken in 1999?

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  2. Anonymous12/12/2011

    I was actually a little surprised that you decided to race the Trek. It sounds this will be the last time we see the flying URT at the starting line. It must have been rough since your finish times are usually quite a bit better than that. I was getting a bit battered in places even on my 29" wheels. Definitely a fun race overall. See you in the spring!

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  3. sounds like you beat the hell out of that bike...haha...pretty impressive considering you were riding the mtb equivalent of a delorean....maybe hit 88mph on the first lap next time...nice ride dude

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  4. what's with that course? how does it have that many absurdly straight lines?

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