“It was the best of times it was the worst of times.”
My last two races have been plagued with bad luck, but with all the problems I’ve had it’s still just peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I am just happy to even have the opportunity to travel around and race my bike in cool places. Throughout the years in racing my bike you I’ve learned that you have to take the good with the bad and just enjoy the ride.
My first race of the season was Syllamo’s Revenge in Arkansas, this was the 4th stop on the NUE for 2013 and I was hoping for a good result. My friend Jonathan Davis had told me of his race disaster the year before with a series of flats, which led to over an hour of running to the next aid station. He told me to make sure you run some UST tires because of the very sharp rocks on the course. I didn’t heed his advice and had almost the exact race experience as he did… I had 3 flats and ended up ripping my tire open so bad it was unfixable and had to run for 2 hours to get back to civilization. Out of tubes and with a shredded tire I was forced to drop out of the race.
The second race was the Growler 64 in Gunnison Colorado this is a super fun mountain bike race lots of great trails and strong competition. The start is definitely faster than I like, but you just have to go for it and try to hang on. After the initial grunt of the opening climb, I was at my limit as we got to the first single track section. I was happy with my position just behind the lead group. However, about halfway through the first lap disaster struck! I was behind a couple guys who had joined me the lead guy struggled on a technical section and I was in the wrong gear and tried to make a quick shift but instead my chain snapped! With no chain tool, I had to wait for someone to loan me one, finally after about 10 guys going by with no luck Kyle Stamp a Breckenridge local loaned me his chain tool.
I finally get the chain fixed but by this time about 30 something guys have gone buy so I start to make my way through the field. By the middle of the second lap I am closing in on the top 10 and then the chain breaks again! If there is any good luck it’s that this time I’m about 3 minutes from an aid station so they fixed me up in no time. I was able to finish the race and had a great time riding a supper fun course, I always want to do my best but sometimes the best you can do is to just finish.
