No go on the SS

I'm a no go on the SS because Mike either forgot to order the Hub or he deliberately forgot. Either way I'm not that shook up, I'm looking forward to the Suamico race. I like the course. As of right now I'm self supporting. IDK if Jeff Frings is going there or not. Maybe we can share a tent, we'll see. BTW, I bought an EZ-up on Ebay today for $65. I think it will be one of my better finishes of the year. In other news I'm strongly leaning towards doing sport for the remaining 3 races of the season. I think Cyclocross season is going to shape up to being very good to me. Only time will tell.

12 Hours SS?

I'm frantically trying to build up a White Industries Eccentric SS rear wheel for Saturdays Stump Farm 12. If I don't get it built up in time I'll do it geared.

Smokin' Spoke: The Aftermath

So... I have returned from the dust bowl that was the Smokin' Spoke. I arrived @ the Camp Tesomas grounds at about 3pm on Saturday and I promptly jumped on my newly singleified 8500 sporting a generic brand singulator. I will be getting a White Industries Eno Disc hub for this bike to guaranty long term reliability. So anyway, I did a lap of pre-ride without any problems. I did notice that this course is a bit on rough side, and for those of you who did not race today but do race WORS on a regular basis the best way to describe this course is much like Iola but longer. Its was very undulating, rocky, sandy, bumpy as in _n_/\_mmmmmm_/\n_ kinda stuff, if you get my drift. At that point in time I thought I was the only person from Expo racing at the race, at around 8pm while I'm cooking dinner which consisted of Sweet Corn on the cob and Bush's Brown Sugar Baked Beans and Chips Ahoy Cookies Chris Tambarino Cruises on by and I talk to him for a little while. Talked to him for a while and wished him luck tomorrow, finished eating and made then made a fire in my grill and hung out. This turned out to be very boring. So I extinguished my fire and grabbed my chair and some jiffy pop I had brought and went down by KT, Emily and Barb Antenneau and Sarah Huang. And we built a fire by their camp site and made s'mores or SA MORES as Barb would say. Mitch Gantz and a Friend of his dropped by and hung out for a while. At around 1030 we all decided to call it a night and get some shut eye. I woke up in the morning at about 7:15 made a fire, reheated my baked beans made some more corn, had some endurolytes. Checked in at registration and got all psyched up, made sure my bike was in tip top working condition, and I decided it was. Made my way to the start line at about 9:50 Said HI to the Watkins family, Jordan was already on course since he was citizen youth. Had a Gu. Made it to the start line got a decent starting position and GOOOOOOOOOO! was screamed. I led out poorly, loosing uncharistically large amounts of distance and time in the first mile or so which was very easy gravel basically. There was a traffic jam caused by some sport Women early in the single track which backed up practically the entire citizen field, that sucked. So after that traffic was heavy passing and coming from behind as everyone was in single track. The course was very single track heavy, uncharistic of a Marathon course. The general consensus of everyone I talked to was it was a nice course but not really deserving of a marathon race. The extra difficulty did spread out the field a bit more and brought the avg. speed down which I didn't mind that much. I can notice a huge difference in my riding style since the beginning of the year. I'm getting a lot better in the single track which is where I lose lots of my time normally. So anyway getting back to the race, I eventually got into a pretty good rhythm pegging off riders early in the second lap, I was feeling good. The course after lot of riding let me go quick, that and I think I had more confidence in the course on the second lap and I had a better understanding of the predictability of the course and what not. Towards the end of the second lap I started to cramp up a bit. I did underestimate how warm it was a little, and didn't really realize it was well into the 80s until then. Mind you it was easily low 50s in the morning, maybe even upper 40s. I could see my breath easily. So I pushed it out to the end, I had to let up a little because of the cramp but didn't cost me more than 1 minute or so. I did also have a mild case of monkey butt because of the roughness of the course. I don't use Chamois butter but I can tell you I will next week for the stump farm 12. I will have to double check on my total time when they post the results on the WORS website I ended up coming across the line in 63rd out of 129, 8th out of 10 in age group and I believe I ended up 6th maybe 7th overall in the Citizen 19-24 y/o Marathon Series. That by no means is spectacular but to the best of my memory is one of my better results to date, being better than over 50% of the Citizen field. Chris Tambarino got 2nd overall in Sport and 1st in age group. Brandon had problems with his knee and DNF. I forgot to look where Jordan finished and you'll have to wait to see where he finished. All in all I think the weekend for worth while for me, I enjoyed myself and I will return for next years Smokin' Spoke. Its a 4 hour drive for me but I believe it was worth it, but Single Speeders beware.

Leaving for WORS Marathon #3

In an hour or two I'm leaving for Rhinelander, WI site of the Smokin' Spoke, WORS Marathon #3. I'm anticipating a decent result, I do better in longer races. I'm all geared up, I'm taking my 8500 and my Supercal 29er. My 8500 has been singlified. Its running a singulater right now. I plan to get a White Industries Eccentric hub so I can run it SS with confidence. I won't even have to give up disc brakes. I'll make a post and a race recap when I come home Sunday hopefully I'm taking my camera and hopefully I'll have some good pictures to bring home. Hopefully all this stuff makes me go fast.
Oh and altough its a week away I just want to Wish Constantine Peters Good luck at the 24hour SS Championships in Monterrey California @ the 24 hours of Adrenaline.

State TT and Alterra MTB Race @ Crystal Ridge

Nastyness

I'm going to do a full race report when I get a chance/feel like it.