Wilderness 101 Prelude

This lack of sleep thing has gone past the big fat joke stage, I am really hurtin' at this point. I had a great 101 despite the hockey bags under my red, swollen eyes, I'll tell you all about it later over coffee. The short story is that I beat my P.R. by almost an hour, breaking eight hours, but this year that was only good for 28th place.

A bunch of the Cyclingdirt vids are up and the 29er Crew post is on its way.


We left Friday morning, Will, Montello and I. Things started off auspiciously enough, Will broke his glasses putting the bikes on the car. I think it's a good look for him.



While he was doing that, I was off doing an emergency road-side repair for M, who had flatted the rear wheel on her sweet, sweet fixie on her way to a conference. I would do a crap job, leaving a piece of glass or wire, or some damn thing in the casing, causing her to flat yet again. I would have to go back and help her out a second time. Of course I was wearing my compression-sock-New-Zealand-All-Black get up.

For whatever reason I don't seem to pull it off as well as they do.

Eventually we got the Fit packed up. Three grown men with all their gear for a hundred mile mountain bike race, jammed into a little, black clown car. A clown car that would end up smelling so bad that it wasn't funny by the end of the trip.

Only brown liquids. I've slept so little recently, I now drink my coffee out of a gallon jug.

Half way to Coburn, PA, we noticed the rack was migrating off the back of the car with our three bikes on it. Luckily we caught it before tragedy struck.



I knew fellow Breck Epic blogger grant recipient Montana was going to be there, I knew he could drive a monster truck really fast, but I did not know how fast he was on the bike. More on that later.



What I did not know was that another blogger grant recipient was going to be there, Sarah Uhl. She's super-nice and so is her (fast) boyfriend, Andrew. I'll be glad to see more of them in Breck.


We showed up late to the race venue, doing a little pre-ride on the last few techy miles of the course on Fisherman's Trail, then went for dinner and beers in Millheim at the Elk Creek Cafe. The next morning we would wake to the sound of the gong at 5:30 AM.

Tomorrow morning I will not be waking to the sound of a gong, the sound of a gun shot, or even the sound of a tractor trailer full of howler monkeys smashing through my living room wall. Or I'll be up at 5AM working on this post, trying to make it not suck so freaking much.