North Park Time Trial

The Month o' Mud set an attendance record last Sunday with 203 racers. Looks like mountain biking is getting more popular in Western PA.

Colleen came along and whined about how heavy her Karate Monkey is. It does weigh about 1/4 of her body weight, so maybe she's justified.

The race was a short 6 mile loop with racers starting at one minute intervals. Aaron figured the winning time would be under 30 minutes.

My start time was at 9:44, and Colleens was three hours later at 12:50. That's down side to having 203 riders at a time trial.

I sprint down a grassy hill to a tree, circle around it and start the climb up into the woods. Going as hard as I can, and it hurts.

Six minutes in I catch my first rider. I work though all the twists and turns and catch another guy. Try to get around them quickly. The seconds matter in such a short race.

I turn right on the expert loop and hit a super steep climb. I make it up, but I'm just barely turning over the pedals. At the top I hit it again. No time to slow down.

(breaking in the new goat kit. now I won't be so easy to keep track of in the woods. hooray)

My watch is at 28 something. Damn. I'm not going to make it in before the 30 mark. Head down and I'm spinning as fast across the flat section up top. Come on downhill. It's gotta be close.

Finally. I cross the road and do the last steep climb. Down the other side, skid around the big pile of roots, and up into the finish chute. Eh. That hurt. Had to be slow.

I stand around the finish line behind the laptop waiting for a time. The data is entered on the Excel spreadsheet. 31:06.

That's good enough for first in single speed, only about 20 seconds ahead of JPok. I tie for 2nd overall with Henry Spreng Jr. the Elder.

Most importantly, I finally crushed Gunnar. He may have been sick, riding a little fat boy bike with the brakes set up on the wrong sides, and not really racing me, but I'll take what I can get. Victory over the elderly!

We went off to do a little recovery lap of the park, and I was completely burnt. Apparently everybody else had a little gas left, because they were killing it.

Many hours later, Colleen did her lap. She rode well and took 3rd in sport women. That's good enough for a big $10 pay out. Very nice.

I keep telling her to paint that rigid fork a florescent color so that more people will notice it and give her kudos. After all, if you're doing something stupid, you better let everybody know it.

And now it's about time to start thinking about next year.

While I am making huge sums of money as a part time bike messenger, I still might need a little bit of extra funding for next year's race season.

Enter the first Official Knobby Meats Racing Conglomerate Fund Raiser. I'm gonna sell t-shirts Rad Racing style.

The prototype viking cat of destruction t:

Would it be better with a battle axe?