Tortoise and the Hares

This weekend was the 2nd/3rd/2nd round of the TMBRA Fall Series. The race was in Abilene, TX which is of course named after Abilene, Kansas, which is where I was born 28 years ago. Paul and I showed up on Saturday afternoon to preride. Looking foward to an easy 9.5 mile ride we started into the trail and after about an hour of extremely fun riding, we were done. The course, while extremely rocky was no where near as technical as it appeared at first glance.

I lined up on Sunday and saw only 6 other riders. Cap Carter, local TMBRA official informed us that we would be racing against a girl and if she chicked us, he would give her 20 bucks. I hope he made good on his promise. Actually, he owes her a bonus because she beat more than half the field. So the race starts and of course 2 guys go off like rockets. I saw their pace and said screw that and rode my own pace with another guy. If those wanted to ride that speed, good for them. We dove into the single track and I was sitting in fourth place and I was happy where I was. The course was smooth, then rocky, then smooth, then rocky............ Many of you know I don't like technical rocky trails, but this course so well laid out that my bike was rolling over the rocks without too much finese.

After about 10 minutes, I was sitting very happily in 4th place and I saw the first of the fast guys walking his bike. He appeared to have a flat. It was most likely caused by one of the millions of cacti that lined the course or a pinch flat. So I rode the rest of the first lap in 3rd. About 1/3 of the way through the second lap a good friend of mine in the 30-39 group came by about the same time I noticed 2nd place was not too far ahead. So I jumped on Chris's wheel and let him pull me up to the other guy. After sitting on Chris's wheel for a while, I lost track of him and came across the guy who was leading. He was sitting next to the trail with a broken chain.

So here I am, I am sitting it second place, about 15 seconds off of first and I have a 3 mile rock garden in front of me. I also have about 2 miles of open single after the rock garden. I had to pick my way through the techy stuff as smoothly and as quickly as possible. I would lose a little bit of time in each rock garden and then I would close the gap between the gardens. I was confident I could catch the guy in the open area. Unfortunately, I didn't get to beat him straight up. As we came through the last rock garden, the other dude flatted. When I saw that I knew I needed to keep the pressure down and stay smooth. After 3 or 4 minutes, the course doubled back and he was still fixing his flat. At this point I knew I had it in the bag.

After a few bad races last year it is great to finally have a good race where the luck actually goes my way.