Washburn Wisconsin is where I claim to be from. This weekend was Homecoming which occurs every 5 years. Pretty much everyone from the past comes out of the woodwork and back to town. This year, the folks at the hardware store decided to put on a mountain bike race, to my surprise. I had brought my CX bike with me just in case my friends wanted to go for a ride on the local ski trails. When I got there on Thursday, my classmate was like "You're doing the mountain bike race, right?" And I'm like "What race?" And he's like "DUUUUUDE!!!!".
Yada yada yada, I got up at 8 after a pretty serious night on the town. I rolled down to West End park, registered, and warmed up. 45 of us rolled out on a gravel road, straight into a snowmobile trail. I made the selection of the top 5 in 5th place. We took a right and the snow machine trail turned up some kind of evil power line, right-of-way situation with a steady 4-5 minute climb. The front pack split with the top two (Aaron Swanson and Paul Belknap) pulling away. I settled into third. At the top of the climb, the trail flattened out for a bit then the course turned onto a gravel road. By that time, another guy (Noah Michaelsen) pedaled up to me. We worked together almost like teammates, trading pulls. Something went audibly wrong with his bike and we stopped to try to fix it. He was missing a brake caliper bolt, so no dice.
In the end, he did not contest for third place, which was bittersweet. I tried to give him the apple pie I won. That's right! Apple Pie! (The overall winner got 2 pies) We got to talking, and it turns out he's married to a girl I knew in high school.
Overall, it was a great race. They probably didn't need chip timing with only 45 people. The course resembled a mini-Chequamegon 40 which was cool. It will be great to come back next year.
Thanks to Steve H. for the photos. You are a BEAST!
I had my powertap on the bike. I'm going to post my power data in a little bit ...
No comments:
Post a Comment