Well, much like with Lance, we all knew what was going on. I personally saw Craig sneaking cans of unicorn lard into his panniers at the AH 135. I'm going to throw away those CraigStrong panties that I've not taken off for a whole year. Fortunately for Craig, you can dope all you want on Cup O' Dirt rides, so I guess I'll send him a couple of cups for all those rides he did last year. Don't mix your EPO and meth, though, kiddos.
September 8th: Day two of the Gravel Consipracy in northern MN was 123 miles of gravel, drizzle, endless washboard, an ATV trail that eventually faded into nothingness and a last minute reroute onto pavement to finish it out. I suffered through some light tendonitis in the ankle most of the day, so I skipped the third and final day to avoid aggravating it any further.
September 16th: Pre-ride of the Moonshine Metric course with Charles the Powergoat. 65 miles or so.
September 29th: Another excellent year for the Moonshine Metric. Temps Started off about perfect and dipped to chilly by then end of the night. The roads were so dry that one of the B roads we hit was a few inches deep of cocoa powder for a mile long stretch. Finished the night with plenty of food and drink and hung around the fire pit til around 3am before hitting the sack.
October 21st: Won my first bike race in over 13 years! This was my second time racing the American Gothic Gravel invitational and after the early C road I had a sizable gap so I gave it a shot and started pushing it. Ended up fighting cramps from about the mid point on, but had enough juice to hold my lead. Not a big field this year, but still very proud of the accomplishment. Noodled around the parking lot afterwards to kill some time and rack up that last mile point five for the metric.
December 16th: Rode my fastest gravel metric ever with the clock sitting at 4:15 when I hit 62.1. This was no cupcake of a route either, with 3000ft of short, punchy hills.
December 28th: Took the start of the Tuscobia 150, but lower back pain was bad enough by the time I hit the second checkpoint togive me enough of an excuse to pull out. Pretty disappointed that I didn't rest a bit and try to finish, but we'll just chalk that up to lessons learned and future motivation. Finished with about 64 miles.
That should bring my year end totals to 12 metrics and 9 fulls, which is a bit wimpier than I was originally expecting. Still, I had fun doing them and I'll look to better that mark in 2013, starting with the Arrowhead 135. Have fun out there, folks!
No comments:
Post a Comment