The Bull Elk and I headed up to Jackson on Thursday. We got there a bit too early to check into our condo, but soon enough we were in. I went out for an easy spin on my road bike and threw in a few short hard efforts. We tried to go to Dark Knight that evening , but the little theater looked to be overrun by Touron's, so we headed back to the condo. BZ and Elena showed up around 9 or so, Erika, Dusty and Monique a bit later.
Slept in Friday, tooled around a bit and went for a pre-ride of the course around noon. I love this course. Thanks to Mikey and Jay there was a line up the service road steep pitch. That evening we had a team pasta feed in the condo, around 20 - 25 people eating pasta and salad.
Saturday am was nice and cool, but it was not to last. We had 6 at the line for 40+ Chris, Fred, Alex, Karl and a local. I got the hole shot and tried to keep it smooth on the technical sections over roots and rocks, Chris was behind banging around a bit. He got around me where I expected, on the double track before the new singletrack traverse. I charged up a bit to him on the next double track section. Fred was not too far behind. Chris ended up getting by a few SS'ers on a few short climbs, I got stuck behind them on descents. He was still in sight at the end of lap one. Lap 2 i settled in a bit on the initial single track, Fred was still right behind me maybe 30-45 seconds. After I got around Jamie P (SS winner) and The Bull Elk, I throttled up in the rolling sections, taking it smooth on the steeper ones. I was likely less than a minute down on Chris going into lap 3 and less than a minute up on Fred. I kept the pace up through the initial ST again and hammered the gradual climbs, When I dropped into the deep woods Singletrack I was feeling good, when with out warning, I was attacked by something on a slow speed corner I took a bit to wide.
I felt a scratch, but nothing too bad, but when I got on a straight stretch of trail, I looked down and saw my right shin was mostly red and damp. So of course, I start freaking, I slow down, try and calm myself, and keep checking the wound. It took about 10 minutes of this before I finally realized the bleeding had stopped and I would be ok. So I ramped it up again, in case Fred was close.I ended up in Second, again, 3 minutes down to Chris, who said he had a horrible 2nd lap. Maybe without the shin attack (i think it was a Bear) i could of been close. Fred blew up on the last lap and came in 5 minutes behind me. The weird thing about the shin, was it didn't even knock me out of my pedal, I kept pedaling and moving forward. Kind of bummed about not being able to hit the hot tub post race though.
Saturday evening we went out for Mexican, and watched a DVD and blew of the Zeppelin tribute band, cause we are old.
Sunday we were going to ride, but being old and tired led us to do a short hike and head home.
I was happy to see the 5 year old raggedy Element got 27 mpg for the trip, with the AC blowing. Gas is 30-40 cents a gallon cheaper in Jackson than it is in SLC.
3 comments:
Maybe if you had some hair on those legs it would have deflected the bears attack and you could have won. You never know.
I think what deflected a full blown bear attack was the sight of those skinny legs was only worth a swipe of the paw.
midget bear?
Post a Comment