What a race.

When I got down to tucson, I had no idea what to expect. I have never ridden in tucson, I’d been on my mountain bike 2 times in the last 2 weeks, and I had no idea whether all the skate skiing, riding rollers, and telemarking was going to make any difference at all.

Evidently, something came together.

I showed up at The Bay Horse Tavern around 9:30 on friday night after haulin’ ass down there from flag. I met up with Timmy and had a couple beers while we waited for the ‘packet pick-up’ at 11:30. The packets consisted of a piece of paper with my name scribbled on it. Classy.

As you probably noticed from the pictures, the Shindaggers held down the pole position in the show that night (post packet-pickup, and post broken down car in phoenix), and they did a marvelous job of playing loud music and drinking heavily.

When we arrived at Tim and Amy’s house at 1:30 that night, I was informed by Mr. Benson that I was “off the flagstaff team” because I turned down a beer. He mumbled something about how “this is how we do it”, and cracked the last beer out of the case which promptly ended up on Pete’s head.

The next morning was a whirlwind circus of 6:15 wakeup calls, coffee, spandex, hungover shindaggers, and singlespeeds. We rolled out the door and made the 7:30 arrival time at Agua Caliente park by a good 10 minutes.

We had a neutral ‘warm-up’ ride out to the base of mount lemmon highway where we regrouped and an incredibly hungover Deejay started us with a ‘get the hell outta here’.

At this point, we were in the shade, and because of the cold, I couldn’t feel my feet or hands. Nevertheless, we all started the grind up the highway to prison camp. Within about 5 minutes of starting the climb, a group of 10-15 people decided to start upping the pace. I hung on for a while, drifted back a bit, and then caught back up with the group. As we passed one of the final switchbacks in the shade, whomever was up front cranked it up a few notches and the racing began. Slowly we started popping people off as we got into the meat of the climb, and by the time we hit the turnoff for prison camp we were down to about 6 people in that lead group.

I made it though the first descent and up the first major singletrack climb (which involved a lot of walking) with Timmy, and when he stopped at the top, I unwrapped a granola bar, threw half in my mouth, half into my jersey pocket, and kept rolling.

I didn’t see Timmy again until the finish.

After rocking some more double and singletrack on the AZ trail, I dumped out on a dirt road and started putting all those recent hours on the rollers to work. I started spinning like it was my job, and ended up catching 2 people on the road.

The second guy I caught was named Mark (aka “SkidMark”, from Sierra Vista). It turned out that when I passed him on the road, it was the beginning of a 2.5 hour battle royale for 3rd place.

There were clearly strengths and weaknesses that both of us exploited to play the passing game for the next 25 miles of race.

The roads and climbs belonged to me. He was hurting on the climbs, and I was still riding most of them all the way to the end. The roads were also my territory. I just spun my legs until they were numb, and kept going. I passed him on most of the uphills and stayed even or gained on most of the flats.

On the other hand, he had knowledge of the course, and seemed to descend at near terminal velocity. I bumbled a couple turns, and he caught me a couple times while I was deciphering my GPS to figure out where I was going. He also would pull handily out of sight around the next corner whenever the trail turned downhill.

It was classic. Passes were made on a regular basis, and every time somebody pulled away, the other person would give it a little more juice and catch up. We were chatting every time we made a pass for most of the race up until the second time through the aid station. That is when it officially got real.

I was ahead (it was at the end of a climb up the road) and pulled in to fill up my camelbak. Mark hadn’t stopped the first time through, so I figured he would have to stop. I was filling my camelbak when the guy next to me says:

“Did you see that guy come through here. He was cruisin and didn’t even think about stopping.”

Followed by me spilling water all over myself as I look up and say:

“Son of a BITCH! Now I gotta go catch him!”

I stuffed a whole bananna into my mouth, threw on my camelbak and the cat and mouse game resumed with a new vengeance on my part.

Unfortunately, we were at the top of the course at that point, and the final 8 miles of gnarly downhill sealed the deal for Mark. He came in somewhere around 3-5 minutes up on me at the finish due to his amazing descending abilities on that trail.

It was a great competition to get in, because I think it put us a good 20+ minutes ahead of the next person by the end of the course, so at least I didn’t have to worry about being passed back into 5th.

Mark greeted me with a beer at the finish. That’s the kind of competition I like best. I’ll raise my glass to SkidMark from Sierra Vista tonight. Cheers.

In the end, I finished in just under 5 hours for around 49 miles of riding.

We drank beer, ate pizza, and chilled out for the next couple hours while everyone else came rolling in. Joe Manning finished the course, but I think the rest of the flagstaff crew all cut it short at one point or another. Benson and Pete fell asleep under a tree and ended up with about 30 miles total, BRob turned back early, and the Gnome blew a chain up, and had to take a shortcut to get over to the final downhill. Timmy finished the race as well, but was riding his geared bike. He had it duct taped in one speed mode for the first part of the race, but the pink duct tape was nowhere to be seen by the time he rolled into the finish line. He muttered something about “I figured I had these gears, I was gonna use them”. He said he was intending to do the MBAA race in phoenix, and just kept driving instead. Good call.

Deejay not only had beer and pizza waiting, but he also had a master list of schwag that everyone won. I scored big and got a New Belgium hat and a Surly Torsion Bar which is a nice sweeping flat bar with a 15 degree sweep and a 666mm width. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I’m sure I can find something.

That night we gorged on mexican food with Jake the Snake and I ended up back at the Bay Horse for awards and raffle prizes. There was a 29er SS frame from KHS, a chrome bag, a crumpler bag, and assorted New Belgium goodies. I ended up winning again and took home a rigid 29er KHS fork and a New Belgium wall hanging/poster/tire thing.

Not too shabby on the schwag end of things. Of course with a new bar and a fork, I’m halfway to a new bike, right?

It was an awesome race, and I felt better than I ever though I would at this point in time. I was glad I went down for it, and it inspired confidence for this coming weekend and the APC. I felt strong for most of the race, never cramped up, and had a great time for that course.

Thanks to Deejay for putting the event on, and I hope to make it out next year as well. It was a good kickoff to what is shaping up to be a good season. I can only hope to keep it up.

Keep the rubber side down.

p.s. Benson said I’m back on the Flagstaff team after my 4th place showing. Thanks, really.