wlee
Active Member
Cat 2 45-49.Woke up and its POURING ! wow this is going to be messy that place gets like peanut butter when its wet. Grab my number plate and all of the sudden it just stopped raining. Turn on my garmin and it says "low battery" :hmmm: just took it off the charger last night and also realise I forgot my helmet home :cry:. Not a good start to a day. Walk down to turn 1 to see the cat 3 guys off, I have a good buddy in the 40-49 class and to learn what line is working and realise just stay off the mud and on the pine needles. Well we take off and I drop to like 10 th ,not good but at turn 1 everybody bunches up and hit my downshifts perfectly and flew up it on the needles and jump into about 5 th,cant believe it went so smooth. Start getting into a flow and pass a few other guys from other clsses and still cant believe no one is on my wheel yet cause there are some heavy hitters in my class. Hit that black dirt section which I love and cant get around a slower rider and instead of being patient I make a move but the bike low sides and I hit a tree with my right shoulder so hard it almost took the wind out of me, I can still hear all the things cracking in my neck. Pull over and I think i`m done cause i cant raise my arm so how am I going to drink. After what seemed like a minute or so no one passed me so I decide to just go and it subsides a bit ,adrenallin is a great thing.Cross the street which I never did before and it is rediculous, cant believe how much climbing there was.walked most of them since i cant pull on the bars with my right hand and loose a couple spots but I just want to finish. See matty and tell him I`m hurting and he said "just keep going" and those words I kept saying to myself the rest of the race.Thanks Matty ! Finally start going downhill and cross the road and hit the feedzone and switch bottles and go.Then I see Segundo working on his front tire which is not cool cause he is a good guy and yell at him to get going. Now i`m in the dont loose anymore position mode and clear the first section without any problems and see the tree I hit which was the last one before the fireroad. Stupid on my part for hitting it. I catch Mtnrider and ride with him for a while and tell him to go cause I`m hurting and we are not racing each other.We cross the street and here we go again back to the endless climbs and Dave (mtnrider) makes them, I still cant believe he made that climb, Dave you are an animal ! Go to drink while Im walking and the arm says nope ain`t moving that way so i dont think about drinking anymore and start going down finally but see like 4 guys in my class gunning for me so i just ripped and hit the field and opened a gap on them and finally get to the finish line ! See Steve336 and bobmadd and tell them and when I grab my shoulder its has a bump the size of a golf ball and it hurts bigtime. On a good note see the results and finished 4 th in my class, my first top 5 in cat 2 so i`m happy. No work today, staying home to try to heal cause the sixpack is sunday and i dont want to miss it .Congrats to mtnrider on finishing 7 th in his first cat 2 race, Steve336 on getting 6 th, bobmadd on getting forth and Segundo.......well you are amazing, you took a bad fall, flatted i was told and still finished 4 th. Amazing.
In the mean time I see several people I passed going by and offering me their sympathies (thank you guys) but I also see my competition fly by and I get really clumsy trying to speed things up. Got my gloves off and finally get the valve out, the tube in and the air in too. However, when I put the axle in (15mm Maxle QR) is very hard and doesn’t wanna go all the way thru 
