While not an official "pay an entry fee, get a timing chip, see your results" type-gig....the slugfest tonight should be good. C-Dub, Snake Tat, Skinsuit Tim, and yours truly will do our best to kick each other to the curb after work until dusk. Somebody's gonna puke, somebody's gonna crash, one guy will win, and 2nd place sucks. The best part is that it doesn't cost $35 to enter this sufferfest.
Update:
Work was good, but who cares? I'll get a signed picture of the resort when I leave someday, a pat on the back, and discounts if I ever want to come and stay on my own dime.....it's all a facade really. I gotta get me some health because work doesn't provide that benefit. So I punch it on the drive home, feed the pooch, change into the silly spandex costume, and out the door.
....So at the trailhead there was a guy loading up downhill bikes to shuttle up to the top of Elden. The downhiller trails are freakin' nutz here, and I do my best to avoid them since I'm a chicken when I look at dug out 20 foot gaps, huge drops, 10 foot high log roll-offs. Much respect to those guys to a point - If they actually rode their bikes to the top and earned their turns, well there you go....but they don't, so whatever. I still don't get it - the climb is the burn that I crave, the white hot anaerobic pain that completely eliminates everything else going on in my life - the ultimate reset button. Maybe for them it's the risk of ending up in the ER that hits their reset button. Maybe they are just stoned enough not to care.
Yellowcard was playing from the downhiller truck. It got my foot a tappin'. Good thing - game on. The neutral rollout was calm tonight, and we was jus' playin' it cool until we hit dogfood wash, and then the door to the pain cave flung open. I was hanging on in 2nd, keeping an even standing cadence. Switching to a 32x19 a week ago has completely changed my performance for the better. The 18 tooth cog I've been pushing for two years - shit - maybe I just can't push it anymore on these climbs. All I know, is I feel a hella' lot better spinning a touch more.
After three steep pitches at near redline effort, we were up near the wilderness boundary having climbed 1,500 vert on the dirt in > 5 miles. We lost Snake Tat on a couple of the pitches but he was never more than a minute back and we all kept the hammer down until the climbing finally stopped and...payback.
Traversing mostly downhill, Snake Tat misjudged a log jump and caught his wheel on the way over - a nice craaaaaasssshh into dry, dusty dirt. It looked like he got hit by an Iraqi dust storm, although I've never seen one. In the process of falling, he ripped the sole off his shoe - and the sole and cleat stayed clipped in. Turns out his Northwave shoes are 10 years old. I'd say he got his money's worth. His cleat was all f'd up, and that was it for him. Confidence blown, and he was hike a biking it home. We followed some sort of made up on the fly "no teammate left behind" mantra because usually we'd have mocked him and made him chase back on. But he was rattled - so we did the right thing and got him to the fire road safely - said adios - and enjoyed the drop back to town on Schultz Creek Trail.
After some leftover chiliquilas, a Tecate, and some Mexican fixins, I was thumbing through mail when I came across an envelope with a stack of pics from my Dad's trip out here last month. He took a shot of my sister in Sedona and I immediately noticed she has these enormous fun bags. I called her and told her, and she laughed and said "no shit, I'm nursing". I realize that, but I insisted that they were extraordinary. Her husband chimed in from the other room "If they turn into flapjacks, she'll get 'em lifted". That pretty much put a good cap on a good day.
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