So last weekend I had the bright idea to fly across the country to race in Banner Elk, NC for the collegiate Mountain Bike National Championships. Dumb. Even before I had landed it was already raining, and after taking over an hour to pre, uh, walk a 5-mile course I knew that it was going to be a long weekend. This is kind of what the roads looked like for the Cross Country:
And imagine that I am that big truck. Plus the entire course was covered in fallen leaves, that seemed to make it twice as worse. And there were huge waterfalls of mud cascading down all of the trails, and little leprachuans running around pushing over hapless bikers, and there was a man on fire and a guy with a trident. (Ok, I made that last one up) If I had had one of these I would have been fine:
Unfourtantly I did not have the foresight to bring my tankchair. Needless to say there was much running involved, in fact I would say over half of the 20 mile race I spent off my bike. Not very much fun, and if you know me, then you know that I despise running, like Cats despsise water. (Yeah, that bigtime) It took way too long to complete the race and I was properly wiped out at the finish. I figured that the Short Track on the following day would be better, but oh how I was wrong.
The short track started nice and I made the lead group of six. However on the third lap my rear derallieur decided to have a heart attack, I didn’t even know that was possible, but it happened. This is kind of what my derallieur looked like:
It made it really hard to continue to ride my bike, so I was forced to withdraw from the race. What a waste of a perfectly good weekend. But now bike season is over, and nordic season has begun. Hooray.
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