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Written by Adam Craig
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
 It’s not every weekend that the Random Fun Giant Team gets to do some good ole’ fashioned local bike racing. This weekend we somehow pulled it off, splitting up the brigades (can you have brigades when you’re cross country bike racers wearing tight pants?) between Bend, Oregon and Maliag, Minnesota. Carl and I, surprisingly, handled things here in Bend, while Kelli did the right thing and hopped a flight to MN for the weekend to attend a UCI C2 race.
It might seem as though boarding an airplane would deny Kelli local race status, but the following criteria qualify her. First of all, she’s from Michigan, not that far away. Secondly, she was sleeping on the couch of one of the athletes she coaches. And finally, the race was at a tiny Nordic ski area in a tiny township surrounded by lakes. Sounds pretty roots to me. Not as roots, however, as waking up in my own bed two hours before start time and pedaling over to the Chainbreaker course on a perfectly brisk morning. A similar spirit though, and that’s what we’re focusing on here. Oh, right, we’re also focusing on Barbeques. There was one at Carl’s on Saturday night, much meat and pie was consumed. Then there was one at Brig and Lyle’s on Sunday night, where a bit more balanced (burgers) fare was consumed, before the pie… I love summer, mostly because of barbecues. I also love local racing, for the previous reason… MEAT! GRILLED!
Kelli had the advantage of having the actual race of “local race weekend” fall on Saturday, leaving the rest of the weekend for bike riding and general local type hanging out, even if it’s someone else’s locale… Her fast race start rewarded her with the occasion to ride super fun woodsy singletrack all alone on one of those days when you just feel good. After a solid race performance, she was able to embrace the rest of her free weekend. Always a nice sensation for a casual weekend; made nicer by her sweet victory and some of those goofy UCI points.
Fortunately, Carl and I used our Saturday (and, in my case, Thursday and Friday) to soften up our legs for Sunday’s Cascade Chainbreaker so we wouldn’t have to race too fast and get all tired. Unfortunately, when, at 8am, we had to stumble into the garage and pick a bike for the day, we both came up with the same (obvious) choice: The trusty XTC Composite ghetto singlespeed conversion. When faced with a decision (unassisted by one of our trusty mechanics) of whether to simply pump up tires or pump up tires, check shifting, check shock pressures, etc., we both chose pump up tires only and left the garage with 34tx16t gear for the day. Turns out our chosen singlespeeds weren’t conducive to riding easy. They were, though, quite conducive to riding really fast and laughing a lot on perfectly rain-moistened singletrack while mysteriously distancing ourselves from the rest of the field. Said field included a quite in-shape Ross Schnell (who won the holeshot prime, a bottle of Crater Lake Vodka) and local honch Brig Brandt, who both had plenty of gears to choose from. Carl and I even had breaks to talk about rally cars while coasting the downhills. This was entwined with sprinting out of corners and pumping the backside of everything in search of speed for the next berm. Awesome………. And then I had to take a bathroom break. Perfectly cool morning weather, two bottle cages, and the most enthusiastic water bottle handups in the universe courtesy of Anne and Tucker, worked against the ol’ bladder… After the break, I had to ride really fast to catch Carl so we could continue having a good time. It finally came down to the last lap battle royale. By battle I mean two guys coasting at approximately 14 miles per hour separated by approximately six seconds after my (not really) vicious uphill attack. This situation persisted till the finish, where I found my (surprisingly spry) self on the winning side of said silly advantage. Good times through hard breathing and coasting. We should have actually made bets at Carl’s the night before, although I would have just won a burger, which I had anyway…
At any rate, you all get the point. Local racing is fun. In both instances this weekend there were great courses, tons of people, free pint glasses and bananas, tires or other bike stuff for the winners of each category on the day and a general good time had by all on a weekend afternoon. We shouldn’t forget this while we’re running around the universe taking things all seriously, it’s just racing bikes, no matter what kind, with who or where. Good clean fun. (if it rained the day before, otherwise it’s horribly dusty fun…)
Cheers from the Team Giant Local Brigades… |
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