SSWC09:Race Report

Good day Ladies and Jerks. As I write this, my dog Taco is licking up the bits of my blown mind that are still dripping down my sleeve. The Single Speed World Championships is simply the BEST race on the face of the planet. I don't even know where to begin. The race itself is merely the climax of a week long string of events. In addition to all the BeerBque, group rides, and other debauchery, Durango has some killer trails. Almost literally.
On Thursday, Gino Fellino (of Team Seagal fame) and I set out for one of trailheads near the downtown area. After passing Carl Decker on the way there (he was going the other way) we rode with some local guys on some crazy technical trails that spit us out into a Wal Mart parking lot. No shit. Friday found Gino and myself joing Nico Toscani and Casey F. Ryback (also of Team Seagal fame) for  an hour long shuttle ride up the side of a huge mountain to ride back down on the Colorado Trail. This ended up being an amazing ride. The first 3 or 4 miles of the descent is wet, technical, and very slippery. The trail is littered with wet rocks, roots, and water bars. While attempting to ride a fairly innocent looking creek crossing I was Judo flipped face first into said creek with a nice scorpion like motion that tacoed my rear wheel and left me beat up, wet and freezing. I ended up with a huge gash in my hand that wouldn't stop bleeding. Another rider caught up to me and wrapped it with gauze to stop the bleeding and allow me to ride the rest of the trail. At the top of the 1,000ft, 4 mile climb in the middle of the ride, it was holding up fine. What followed was close to ten miles of the most amazing downhill I have ever ridden. Close to the bottom I find Gino, Coarch, and Nico talking to some other riders, one of which is a real doctor, Dr. Darcey. She stitches me up in the parking lot over a beer and did such a good job that it lasted through the race the following day. Thanks again Dr. Darcey! Coach put some pics up here.

Now to the race. Holy shit. Almost 1,000 people signed up for the race, the SSWC09 website says 2,000 people rode the course that day. I have  never been in a race with that many people evar. There were soooo many people, most of them in some sort of costume. Only about 10 of these people actually raced, the rest of us went on a gigantic, drunken, really really hard group ride. There were beer tents, Jager Faries, and strange hippies with whiskey and bacon. All other races should be like this. I crashed a couple of times, and broke my chain on a climb with about 6 miles left to go, but by that point I was too drunk to care. The last couple of miles were downhill and had me coasting in to the finish line.   Which brings me to the race within the race.

I had one goal, and that was to destroy Robort, thereby saving millions of schoolboys mental health. In a conventional race, the winner is the one who crosses the finish line first, Robort crossed the finish line before me, as evidenced in the above photo. But did he beat me? Let"s review the facts.

So, by my math it seems like I completed the race as it was meant to be done, but since Robort did cross the line before me, I have changed the letters in the title to this blog to his gay favorite colorway, pink. anyway, here's some pics:

Adam Craig in his drawers and a TT helmet. So Aero.

WTF?

Nico helping up the hill.

The after party was amazing, pros were running rampant in the Ska brewery following the basketball game to decide next years host. Start saving for your plane tickets to New Zealand. Jerks.

D9 Bulldozer

Good evening ladies and jerks, and of course, rabid Team Seagal fans. September is here and that means that we are only days away from the most glorious event of all time evar, the D9 bulldozer aka the Single Speed World Championships. Holy shit! Energor, in his infinite wisdom, has seen fit to send me to Durango to share classified information  and PBRs with several members of the original Team Seagal (St Louis) and a contigent of men from China. He has also charged me with the task of crushing Robort, which will in turn crush Robort's will to cruise by middle school playgrounds, drunk on Zima, and hellbent for leather.

The mental well being of thousands of school boys is in my hands.

Keeping that in mind, I have been riding a lot. I have a new favorite ride to work. It begins with a 4 mile sustained climb on the road which puts me on the east end of the 396 trail that I mentioned in my last post, and several hundred feet higher than my house. From this end of the trail it is 4 miles, almost all downhill to the western trail head, which is less than a mile away from the shop. On the way home the trail is mostly climbing and the road is all downhill. It's a great ride in either direction. The service manager at the shop took me on a couple more routes that he likes to do. One of them begins with a 7 mile climb to the top of Mt Francis, which is about 7200 feet (my house is about 5400 feet). Once you get to the top you are faced with some pretty ridiculous downhill, followed by a brutal trail that has lots of long, steep ups and downs. This trail drops you out on an old jeep road called Quartz mountain. This is an amazing downhill. After going down for a solid 7 minutes you are spit out onto the road the shop is on, about a half  a mile away. The riding is pretty difficult here, but it is truly awesome.

This is awesome in a different sort of way

The D9 bulldozer is going to kick ass!!!