Once we got back, did some road riding (lots of rain) and have recently ridden more on the trails and even started racing. The last two weeks were full of riding, with two races. The first was the Eastern Cup 6 hour race, which had lots of friends and locals racing and was a ton of fun. I managed to finish second overall racing the singlespeed, which helped after such a debacle in Canada.
This weekend was the Darkhorse 40. The trails here are sweet. Supah sweet. Wicked pissah sweet. My friend Marc described it perfectly;
Marc: "These trails have the best singletrack in New England."
Me: "Marc, New York isn't part of New England."
Marc: "I know, they're just that F-ing good."
The race started off with a 2.5 mile fire road. I hate roads. The pack stayed together through the first half mile, and then I got impatient. I was feeling pretty good, and wanted to get to the singletrack. I started to lead out, and stayed on the front until the second climb on the road. Two people went off the front, and I stayed on them thinking a group of three would work well on the extensive singletrack portion of the race. I snuck to front again and started to break away when I felt the rear end of my bike start to bounce, and then sag. Shit. another flat. I pulled off to the side and frantically pulled my wheel off. My friend Marc stopped to help me fix the flat, despite my protestations. He said he didn't want to be caught in the hectic pace and handed me a tube and was on his way. I topped off the tube with my Co2 cartridge and hopped on the tail end of the sport wave that was passing me. I felt a bit fired up and passed people frantically on the single track. I rode like a man possessed on the first lap, which after the initial road slog was composed of about 17 miles of singletrack. FAST, flowy singletrack. I didn't realize it until the second lap, but I burned quite a few matches trying to catch every rider I saw ahead of me. Midway through the second lap I fizzled out, struggling up every hill and battling to turn the pedals over. I managed to finish the lap with only two geared riders passing me, and met Marc, dressed and showered at the finish. He had ridden 10 miles and pulled the plug, opting to enjoy the barbecue and beverage sponsors rather than suffering. (He thinks that full throttle tubing for 2 hours on Friday night might have taken something out of him.)
Marc thought I finished in 4th, and I was happy with that. We filled up on the post race bbq and enjoyed the company of the other riders. Darkhorse Cycles knows how to put on a race. The events (singlespeedapalooza is also a Darkhorse production) are lots of fun to ride and hang out at. We hung out for results, and it turned out I finished in second, which was a welcome surprise. It was a great weekend of racing, and now I just have to decide on Great Glen.....
