Well, the first race for GT went without a hitch, I am happy to report. The tent went up without any problem and we got in right next to Dan Porter from Fort Collins.
The rad blue artificial turf for our cosy floor looks great, but I'm a bit chafed that the guy put in charge of getting the GT logo on it completely dropped the ball, even though he had almost a month to pull it together. I have to start all over in finding someone to make me a stencil so I can get the logo on there.
The carbon Marathon, dubbed Leonidas (I can't help naming my bikes) got quite a bit of attention. People came by the tent to scope it out, and people talked to me about it while I was warming up. It's a great bike; I'm very pleased with it.
I'm less pleased with my fitness. But I can't help the fact that I have not been training as much as I'd like. My back injury is just not resolving in the manner I had hoped. Seven months in, and I'm still having pain pretty much every day. It's a buzzkill, for sure.
I haven't ridden my mountain bike for 30 miles yet this year, much less raced for that long, so I didn't really expect to do well. Sure enough, I was 4th out of four.
I don't really understand what's going wrong with the women's fields in Colorado lately; it's strange that there's only a handful of women racing in a state where everyone rides a lot.
But regardless of that, I got through my three ten-mile laps with minimal pain and totally dug the course. The bike performed beautifully and I was very happy to be out there.
I hope that by my next race on June 13th that I will have some resolution to my injury.
On a side note, I wish you could see an actual bear at this race. It would certainly make everyone ride faster.
I did, however, see a snake. It was sunning itself on the trail, and since I have a strange attraction to snakes and frogs, I had to stop for a quick second to check it out and shoo it off the trail. It was huge; I think it had no idea its tail end was still hanging out there in the line of fire.
I could have bunny-hopped it, but I'd have felt really bad if I missed.
Just because I was getting slaughtered myself didn't mean I needed to take out another innocent creature. :)
However, I must say that I'm in an insanely fast category right now. The 40+ women were the fastest ones out there. I got some work to do!
6 comments:
nice write-up! next year we gotta get someone to dress up in a bear costume and pop out of the woods to scare riders as they go by.
NOW we're talking! That would be awesome. There might be a few people coming through the pits asking for a new chamois...
Way to get back on it after surgery! I love the blue astro-turf, it is totally sweet.
Great meeting you at the race Marty! What is your next race?
Ryan, what happened to your blog? I wanted to reply over there, but it's missing.
It was great meeting you, too...are you headed up for the Winter Park series?
GT still has not updated their page to reflect my correct blog address. The address is www.ryanamirault.com Check it out!
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