Treasure Valley Rally Race Report

I gave up caffeine for a week leading up to the race. My first glorious iced coffee was the morning of the race. It sparkled in the late August morning sunlight like a beautiful harbinger of great things to come in the day. Or not exactly...

Let’s start off with all that went well – the positives:

-Beautiful, perfect weather.

-Didn’t get lost; had a nice relaxing drive through some very picturesque areas of Mass

-Got new full-fingered gloves, which worked awesome. Much less beat-up hands after the race, and felt like I had much better control on the gnarly downhills.

-Nice people, great vibe at the event.

-Didn’t get hurt - no small feat considering the insane difficulty level of the course.

OK so I’ve gotten all the positives out – I don’t want this post to sound whiny or overly negative which it could easily dissolve into, so I thought I’d just put that stuff up there. Having said all that, let me just get this out – you may want to cover your children's ears – F*CK!

OK, now I feel better. I told myself going into this year’s TVR that I would not ‘lose it’ and swear and throw my bike into the woods in a fit of rage like a crazy person as I did last year after my second flat on the first lap (Brian Mcinnis can attest to this; he happened to ride past me as I was mid-bike toss). So this year when about 1/4 of a mile into the race my bike started shifting all funny I remained calm. When it continued to shift funny, and started skipping and got worse, I remained calm (think Seinfeld...Frank Costanza's SERENITY NOW!). When I stood up to pedal over a steep rise and my chain snapped, I...remained calm(ish), despite being in my head, irate.

I never a chain tool with me on races. I've never broken a chain in a race. This chain had all of 2 rides on it. It worked perfectly last time I rode the bike - I have no idea why it broke. Luckily Ernie from the MTB Mind team tossed me his chain tool and I quickly fixed it and was on my way....yeah right.

See the thing is, trying to work a chain tool in 90 degree heat as the entire race field passes you one by one, as you're being swarmed by SUPER LOUD AND HUGE mosquitos and your heart rate is about 180 is...challenging. As you can see here my first lap was....a bit slower than my second. Once I finally got it together and working again, everyone had passed me. And I don't just mean the entire expert field, I mean everyone. All the Experts, Sports, and Novices -- hell even the tandem people had passed me.

Once I got back warmed up and into the flow or riding I actually felt pretty good, and cleaned a lot of the rock gardens. The Novices I was passing kept asking me if I were an Elite rider, thanking I was lapping them. I had to explain no - not elite, just really really far back Expert. My only goal was not to get lapped by the Elite field, which somehow (still not quite sure how), I managed to do. On the second lap every few minutes I'd swear I heard Kevin Hines coming up behind me at a high rate of speed. Turns out he DNF'd - not sure what happened, but looking at the lap times it looks like he definitely one of the fastest lap times of all the Elites before his mechanical.

In closing, to do: practice fixing chains in a more expedient fashion. Maybe ride up a big hill at full gas to get really out of breath, then pull over to the side of the road and break my chain and try to get back together in less than a couple minutes. Even better, do it next to a pool of standing water so freakishly large mosquitoes will swarm me as I work. It could be like mechanic skill-building intervals!