Holy Schnikes! WORs #11 Bear Paw

Wow that was my muddiest race ever. It rained pretty much all night getting the course into perfect condition for a mudbath. Cold wasn't a factor during the race even though it rained the whole time. I trashed my legs jogging the day before so I wasn't expecting much from this race. Sure enough I managed to be dead last up the start climb. Things started going better and I picked off a few people in the first doubletrack. Felt real confident in the singletrack with my Specialized Captains mounted front and rear. I was glad I had them too. Eventually things got so muddy I just started running the steep parts. I passed quite a few people that way the first lap. But after that my body started giving out and I started getting caught. The third lap was so bad I couldn't even keep a straight line on the doubletrack. Just got sucked all over the place. Managed to lay it down twice. Its so fun to just slide on your side and not be able to stop yourself. It was still fun and I love this race course. They really stepped up the course with some new singletrack. This is a Legit mtb race. Better than racing on mowed grass any day. My daughter also came and did her first official kids race. She did great and avoided two crashes. Just glad to share the things I care about with the people I care about. Hopefully I can get body to start enjoying jogging trying to get ready for this. Other than that hope to see everybody at Sheboygan. Looking forward to refreshments afterwards thats for sure. See ya outside...

Cheq 40 2011

Well the 29th addition of this race is in the books. And I feel like I still have some unfinished business. I stayed in a cabin with with a mixed squad of Performa and Bike Hub riders and a few others. We got up to HAyward around noon on friday and prerode the finish before picking up our numbers. We had an awesome Ziti pasta feed the night before and headed to bed. We got up at 4:20 and went and staged our bikes. We had decent position around 250 riders back. We then chilled out before getting ready for the 10am start. The race started before the cannon went off which was a little anticlimactic, but funny. It was pretty mellow down Hayward's main street. Then it started getting faster, it was a little hairy going onto 77 but I was following Shoemaker in the gutter so it worked alright. Going up 77 was fast I was almost spun out in 1x9 but managed to keep up with Vogels and Shoemaker. By Rosies Field I was getting gassed and I let them ride away from me. Preferring to ride my own race. I had a fairly uneventful first half of the race. I was just trying to take care of myself and save my legs for after fire tower. I saw a water bottle get dislodged in go flying 10' into the air on one descent. I saw at least 3 tandem crashes. One of the in that huge Martels mudhole. They seemed to think it was funny though. Somebody crashed in front of me in the Lake Helane sand trap and i had to go into the pickers. My leg looked a little like Hoogerland's after that. I caught Shoemaker right before Firetower he said he was cramping. I made it up Firetower, but Shoe passed me back. I popped another gel and got ready to hammer to the finish. I was feeling pretty good. The guy around mile 28 said I came thru 161st which made me pretty happy. On the second rocky descent after fire tower I heard a loud ping and then my rear end got squishy. Flat! Crap! Oh well first flat in awhile. Got off and hit it with my CO2. Found the hole and flipped the bike to seal it with my stans. It sealed right up and away I went. Lost about 50 spots and the tire was still pretty low. The worst part was as soon as I got off my bike my legs locked right up. I went from feeling great to being barely able to pedal. And that was at the start of last part of the Berkie. Happiness was seeing the end of the Berkie. The rear tire was still low so I took it easy on all the corners so I didn't roll the bead. I ended up 360th. Not super happy with that but congrats to everybody who raced. Vogels won the Blizzard bet finishing 191. Kurt Schwiesow finished 62ish and Justin Piontek finished 33rd with a mechanical issue. We topped the day off with a visit to the original Famous Daves BBQ and a fire. See ya outside...