Well one week before my wedding and I knew I needed to get to one last bachelor race before marriage. Luckily instead of having to drive completely hungover up to Iola on my own, Kevin from the shop decided to head up there with me. He just purchased a brand new car and an awesome roof rack so he was definitely looking for an excuse to use it (and to lay the smack down on my hungover butt.)
We met up at 6:30am to make the 5 hour drive up to Iola, Wisconsin. Little did I realize that I had basically made this drive before for Gnomefest Quattro. We chatted and listened to some good tunes, peed one too many times and snacked on some good foods on the way up. We stopped in Steven's Point just down the road from Iola to grab some sandwiches before the race. We ran into the Eppen's who were doing the exact same thing.
I tried to cram some sandwich down and some chips which worked ok. I was still feeling my bachelor party from Friday night. Needless to say I enjoyed the evening and was home in bed by 11:30pm (I was lit beyond belief). We got to the venue and not to our surprise it was packed. There were countless cars everywhere. Right when we got there the Sport race was going off and the line of racers was longer than any I have ever seen. There were probably 250-300 people racing sport. Insane.
We got registered and perused what little of the course we could. With the races being so large, you cannot pre-ride the day of the race, so we checked it out what little we could. It was time to get ready so we suited up after finding Kyle and Robin and pre-rode a little bit. We thought we were going to nab a good starting position by getting to the line early, but it seemed that everyone else was there 10 minutes early.
We lined up somewhere in the 50-60's of our field. We didn't know at the time, but our field was 94 deep. Talk about nerve wracking. National anthem, waiting, call-ups not in that particular order. Then go time. With 50 people in front of you, you have time to make sure you don't slip a pedal or do anything stupid, unfortunately, it is the people hurrying in front of you you have to worry about. Two guys got a little tangled in front of me so I had to clip out. Not a lot of momentum lost and I cranked as hard as I could up the start hill.
The beginning of the race is really open and all doubletrack. There are some wicked steep climbs which were going to take there toll later in the race. I kept the pedal down, but on the open sections just wasn't feeling it. I made it through lap one unscathed and had moved up a little ways.
Lap two went on without a hitch until the end. Riding behind a 29er crew racer out of a singletrack section into a clearing, he took a really inside line near some course markers. I was gassing pretty hard and not paying as close attention as I should have. Totally being my fault I rode too far inside and smoked a pole. Nothing serious and no crash, but I came to a complete stop and had to rally to catch back onto the group after the opening climb.
I caught back on, but the damage was done for lap 3. I had to back off at the beginning of lap 4. So did everyone in the group except Kevin. He was riding really strong and just walked away on the start climb. I could have chased, but knew I had to sit in and let my legs come around. After the 3rd or 4th hard climb I hacked the most epic two part loogie of my life. And after the epic loogie, it was game on.
My legs out of no where came around! My hangover and stomach came out of no where and started working. I kept the pedal to the floor with only two or three guys hanging onto me. At the beginning of the 5th lap I could tell they were hurting and just kept the pace up. I felt great at the steady tempo. I was paying for Friday night on the climbs, but I just cruised those in the granny and kept the pressure on until the singletrack. There was no one in sight at that point. I rode to the end of the race solo on the remaining singletrack.
I ended the day 26th which wasn't too shabby for being more drunk on Friday than I have in probably a year (don't ask about that time). Eppen killed it of course and took 2nd and Kevin took 23rd. Robin did awesome as well taking down 7th in the Women's Elite. Dr. Kyle rode strong as well considering he had just defended his doctoral thesis two weeks before hand. Kim Eppen flatted/burped her tire of the remaining pressure and DNF'ed which sucked. She asked if anyone wanted to ride Sugar the next day, and we all declined. No way was I going to ride when she had some aggression to take out on the trails.
All in all a good weekend. Now time to get married. I have more butterflies in my stomach than you could ever imagine. I know that isn't a thing for a guy to say, but screw it it is true. I love Emily more than anyone could imagine and the anticipation of her being my wife is killing me.
I also have a bitching SS cross/gravel conversion coming up after I get Emily's wedding present all built up. The build has spiraled out of control as new parts that are just hitting the market have literally been falling in my lap as I need them. They have just become available pretty much exactly when I need them. I will detail that in the next couple of days.
