The morning of stage 1 came up quickly, strangely enough I actually managed to sleep fairly well the night before. Up around 4:40 am or so, somehow this has become pretty normal for me, not sure how/why but it happened. I knocked out a few things for work and then started to set up my routine of getting everything ready for the day. Stage 1 was also out of Cove Creek so I was going to have to drive over to it. I expected to finish the stage in 2-2 1/2 hours so I wasn’t going to send anything out to the aid station which simplifies things a little bit.
To get ready all I had to do was get some Carborocket into my 2 bottles on the bike, grab something to snack on before the start, and throw a recovery drink in the cooler. Katie was awesome and made a breakfast casserole for the week so I had an easy and delicious breakfast every morning that I just had to pop in the microwave. Then after all that I’d get Lizzie out of bed and try and get her breakfast going before I headed out.
Monday was full of rain, so the conditions for Tuesday were sure to be really wet. I had thought about changing tires but realized I’d have to go buy some, so I let that go. I got a little warm up, caught up with some folks and got lined up. Everything was going pretty well.
Before I knew it we were off. As expected the start was all kinds of fast and the Enduro section comes early on stage 1. Even when things kicked up a little I couldn’t make up as much ground as I needed to. I saw the another singlespeed ahead, Evan Lang, but couldn’t seem to close the gap down. We hit the single track and I picked up a few folks but could already see I was a little too far back.
Once we got to the enduro I picked up one or two more. Then it started to get really technical and people were getting a little piled up. The big root drop on the upper part of Daniel Ridge had me get off and run past two people trying to untangle themselves. Then the stairs at the Daniel/Farlow intersection, again I jumped off to run around two people apparently trying to talk their way down them. I didn’t make it past the whole group though. The two guys in front of me weren’t interested in letting me by. Even though I was consistently pushing them and requesting a pass. Finally one guy bobbled enough that I had a clean pass. The other only slightly bobbled on one of the rock hops and left me what is my preferred line – so I jumped at it. Just so happened that one of the photographers was there to catch this. Unfortunately not a min or so after that I slid out in some mud and went down on my side. Fortunately it was all soft and I already had enough of a gap that nobody caught me.
When we started the long climb up to Farlow and I slowly started reeling folks in, I finally caught the other singlespeeder, Evan, but it wasn’t until the top of Farlow. This is where I learned he goes downhill better than I do. Shortly into the descent, right in the middle of the big rock garden I caught something with my front wheel and went down. Luckily I hit pretty softly but this fall seemed to linger all week long. I got up and after a quick evaluation I was ok. I got going, Evan was pretty much gone at this point, so it was time to just get it home. I handled most of Farlow pretty effficiently (but conservatively) until I hit the stairs which I decided weren’t worth the risk. As I’m walking down I misstep and land flat on my ass and slide out, this hurt worse than the first fall….and I was walking (foreshadowing for later). From there it’s pretty easy the rest of the way home.
I came in exactly 2 mins behind Evan and overall in pretty good shape. So all and all it wasn’t a terrible opening stage with the slick conditions I was in one piece and 2 mins back.
Stage 2
Stage 2 is an old stage and comes with about 4 1/2 miles of pavement where the pace stays pretty mellow before turning left onto Turkey Pen Road where things open up. It’s important to get up the road in a hurry and onto the single track in a decent position as it gets really hard to make passes. Evan and I climbed most of the road together and at the top he made a pretty hard move to get around a couple folks right before the singletrack, which was a good move on his part as I got hung up. I did manage to close down the gap before we hit squirrel gap and rode right behind him for a while.
After a bit the guy he was following bobbled something and I was already getting impatient so I quickly dismounted and ran around 3 folks. It didn’t take him long to catch back up. I led a good bit of the way through squirrel until I messed up one of the tricky tight turns and let him by. Then I made another stupid mistake and went off the side of the trail in a plain mental lapse. This took me a min to recover from and another guy went by. At this point I was in my head again and my riding got a little less smooth.
As I started up South Mills, a trail that is perfect for a single speed and I couldn’t get anything going. I reached down to check my bottle and had way too much left for how much time I’d been riding. Anyhow, I did what I could to keep going but I was struggling. Up the wheelchair ramp and down Clawhammer, starting to feel maybe a little life but still not feeling great. As I’m passing the aid station Carlos lets me know that Evan is right up ahead. Great, now I’ve got to chase… I managed to catch him just before turning onto Black. I’m a pretty good hiker so I actually hiked up ahead and started down in front of him. Again, he blew by me going downhill, which was a little frustrating because 1. I know I can ride better than I was, and 2. not a lot of people at my level of racing are beating me so soundly downhill.
We finished the day about 30 seconds apart, which I felt ok about after having what I though was a pretty off day and considering I was over 6 minutes slower this year on the same course as I was last year.
Still after 2 days of racing I was 2:30 back and felt like I should be able to do well with Stage 3, or so I thought.
