Before I give you a little glimpse of today’s events, I need to preface it with a couple points.

1. I forgot my camera transfer cord, so you’ll have to wait on pictures and videos until I get back up to flagstaff.
2. I have had more than a couple beers, as well as several shots of wild turkey 101 which were courtesy of Mr. Reichel. He is both a my savior as well as the bane of my existence because of this fact right now.
3. This is a pat myself on the back, ego stroking post. Consider yourself warned.

Today began at 6:00 in the morning, with me packing the car and making it over to FKR and Shawn’s place by 7am for the trip down the hill to phoenix.

We rolled in around 9:45 and after some somewhat minor bike repairs, we hit the trails on south mountain. We rolled up what I think is Gila Valley trail (whatever we were on went to the ‘helipad’). It was a super-fun climb, and I was happy to see that my leg strength was still there for the on-sight. Pretty sweet.

We then rolled back desert classic around to javalina, with a short jaunt up a small section of Mormon to hit a couple of super-intense climbs.

Here’s an old picture of the climb we detoured to hit.

Much to my surprise, I ended up cleaning this bad boy as well. Like I said, my legs were feeling pretty damn strong.

We rolled back, had a few beers, and grabbed some chipotle for dinner.

A quick dinner was in order, because the objective of the night had been layed out to me by Mr. Mancandy the night before.

In case you aren’t familiar, this is basically a 1-on-1 race on what amounts to a singlespeed (or fixed gear) bike with the fork mounted stationary and the rear wheel on rollers. The race is tracked by a computer, with a set distance for the event. For our occasion, it was a 300meter sprint, which amounted to around 15-16 seconds of all-out spinning.

These events are big in the fixie/messenger/hipster circles, and so Ben informed me friday that my mission was to slay as many hipsters as possible.

So, with $10 in hand, we showed up at Boulders on Broadway just before 7pm.

As a side note, Boulders on Broadway is a super-cool hang out, and I had the pleasure of meeting the owner tonight as well. He’s a totally chill dude, and runs a nice place. If you get a chance, be sure to stop by, you won’t regret it.

Anyways, FKR, Mancandy, and yours truly entered the roller races to test our mettle.

FKR was called up first, and had an unfortunate incident with a shoelace around a pedal spindle, so he was quickly eliminated.

Ben had a hard-fought battle, but got eliminated first round as well.

I, on the other hand, grasped the immediate benefit of Benson’s spin classes, and the couple beers that were settling in my stomach, and completely dominated the first round. I was told the guy I raced actually runs AZ Fixed.

I was feeling good, and Riechel fed me a shot of whiskey, so when the second round rolled around, I was ready to rock and roll. Again, the win was decisive, and I actually ended up setting a new time record on that run.

I was, to say the least, feeling my wheaties.

The third round was a lot closer, but I still came out on top. Finally, it was down to 4 of us.

I would love to relate the times to all of you of this fateful final four endeavor, but the times themselves are not important. The only thing that’s important is the fact that I lost. . . by 0.02 seconds. . . to Cole House from the BMC racing team.

Damn.

I came back to win the consolation prize, and Cole ended up falling to Cale (from bicycle haus) in the final round.

Cale was the only person posting sub 15 second runs, and he busted out 3 of them. That guy is a machine.

In the end, I had 4 beers, 3 shots of whiskey, and sprinted my brains out for just over 1 minute, 15 seconds (cumulative). I got everything from “is that guy a ringer” to “is he really going that fast in carhartt’s?” to some enthusiastic “flagstaff represents!” from the peanut gallery.

I have some videos and pics of the races, so you too can relive the 15 seconds of pain and suffering that I endured 5 times over the evening. But, for those, you will just have to wait. Now, I’m gonna fininsh up my final PBR of the night, and call it quits for the waking world.

P.S. Chris, if you’re reading this, post me up a link to some of the pictures you took.