Tsali!

So, the Sycamore Cycles Race Team (henceforth known as SYC Racing or just SYCR) went to Tsali this past weekend for some intense racing action. Tsali is always super fast with way too many people taking it way too seriously, mostly because it is a locally legendary course that everyone comes to in order to show off their fitness for the season. This means that anyone who comes to race and isn't ready to bring it is pretty much setting themselves up for disappointment. Anyway, for the entire week leading up to the race, I was watching the weather forecast hoping that it would be a dry race and not a repeat of last year. The good folks at Weather.com made some good promises at the beginning of the week, but then the forecast started and continued to deteriorate throughout the week. By the time that we got there, it had been raining for 5 days straight, and the course promised to be a water soaked ordeal.

SYCR had a large contingent going to the race, so we decided to get a couple of cabins at nearby Fontana Village. This turned out to be a much better idea than our original idea of camping, since everyone knows that camping in the rain both sucks and is not conducive to good racing. We left the shop about an hour behind schedule, but ended up having more than enough wonderful bakery products from our super sponsor Braken Mountain Bakery. We started out following Ray in the big Moose Racing van, until Captain America decided that the pace was too slow and got on the gas some. After about 5 minutes of this, he looked over at me and was like, "hey is that our exit?" And I was like, yeah, that's it. And he was like, ooh, we just missed it. And Gattis was like, ooh, that sucks. And we kept driving. After we turned around and started heading back to the correct exit, Tristan looks over at me and was like, "hey is that our exit?" Yeah, the rest of the back and forth was very similar to the previous exchange, except that Gattis was a little more animated than the last time. So yeah, apparently Captain America is good at racing bikes, not so good at navigating.

After we finally got on the right road, we met the rest of the crew (who hadn't taken the wrong turn) at some crap-ass, hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that Thad insisted we eat at. The only thing that needs to be said about that place is that they gave Bennett bleach water. Twice. After the restaurant, we went to the store, picked up some groceries and another teammate (hey we can find good racers anywhere. Even the local supermarket.) We finally got to the Cabin, and decided that we wanted to go ride a bit on the course. It was muddy. Very muddy.

It took way too long to clean up after our short little ride, making it probably not quite worth the riding that we got. Everyone came over to our cabin for some dinner and Stars and Bars action. We also watched the Carolina "game", which would more accurately be described as a Kansas beat down of the boys in blue.

So, moving on to the main point of this blog, we get to race day. After a not very restful night's sleep, I woke up to sunny skies and warm air. We got to the race site in time for Julia's race, set up our race pit, and started having some fun. I got lots of pictures, and most of them can be viewed on my Facebook. Julia got a great start, and was first into the woods. She held onto her lead through the whole race, and ended up destroying the field in her first real mountain bike race. Stupid Strong.

Moving on to the men's racing, we had Wes Dickson and Tristan Cowie in the Pro/Semi-Pro field, Gattis Tyler and Chris Bennett and myself in the 19-29 field, and Jimy Fink and Donnie Kirkwood in the old men's category. My race was interesting. The goal for my race was to get into the woods second wheel and follow whoever that was for as long as possible. The start was amazingly easy, and I ended up right where I needed to be. Three of us got a good gap on the rest of the field pretty quickly, and with the crazy roadie that we were following, it was easy to see why. I felt really good, but noticed that my heart rate was pretty high, but still, I was rolling without much trouble. The first lap went by without incident, and I felt good rolling through the feed-zone. As soon as I started up the first climb, I felt like someone sucked all of the juice out of my body, and I suddenly stopped moving.

The rest of the race went downhill from there (figuratively. It felt like it was actually all uphill from there). I started that lap in 4th, got passed by two other people, and caught the crazy roadie which put me in 5th place. I kept hoping that someone would catch me and knock me off the podium so that I could go easier, but since I was still in 5th, I figured that I had to keep going as best I could. I was cramping for the last hour and a half of the race, which, by the way, pretty much totally sucked, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Every time I heard someone coming up behind me, I thought that I was losing my place, but every time, I escaped what seemed inevitable.

I finally finished out in 5th, barely holding on, and finishing with only one operational and none cramping leg. I rolled up to the finish, stoked with my first podium finish in Expert. Wes got 5th and Tristan got 2nd with a broken rear brake in the pro race, making 4 podium appearances for SYCR on an extremely hard day. Good job everybody! This was definitely one of the best race weekends that I've had in a long time for a myriad of reasons... thanks to everyone who contributed to that good time.

So yeah, this was a very long and somewhat uninspired blog, but I pretty much had nothing else to do tonight, so uhh, thanks for reading.