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...