The swamp of Landahl had its way with a few of us this past weekend. Although I was able to scrap out some additional training miles at the end of the week, it did NOT pay off. New mud tires were mounted tubeless replacing a perfectly sick set of Maxxis CrossMarks, but the mud conditions warranted it. Sunday turned out to be a great day sunny and warm, but the prior rain had turned the trails on the climbs into a soupy peanut butter that clung every inch of you and the bike. Little did I know that I'd never make it to the start. On a warmup ride, I rode out the start and up the initial climb with not much issue other than the slippery mud and wondering what it was going to be like with 20 of my "friends" elbowed up trying to get a few seconds on each other in this mess. Well on the way back down to the start I encountered a few guys doing the same, but in one instance I had to veer off the trail into some rocks and think I got tangled up with a stick. Once I got back down to my spot in the lot, I noticed that there was something wrong with my chain as it was all sideways and clicking. The derailleur was all twisted up and the hanger was cracked/broken. Of course nobody has a spare as I ran around frantically with less than 10 min to start time. Even had I found one, the derailleur itself was broken too so either single speed or no-go.
It set in, I wasn't going start. Should I be pissed or just roll with it? I was on my game, the last month was spent training for this race and I was sooo ready. Maybe it wasn't meant to be.... maybe I would have crashed and got hurt, who knows. Several others got banged up and quit, some mechanicals, and some flat out given' up from being exhausted. If this had happended during the race I would have surely had to walk out thru the muck and that would not have been fun. I quickly decided to just roll with it and hang out and not let it get to me... that took a lot of effort. So watched the race and took a few shots, here is a pic of Pat Cat from our team coming around after the first lap in the Expert group. Check out his water bottle flying right at the camera (double click it for a nice close-up).
