episode 148: the good and the zombie gut

The Good.

Friday night was great. The night time trial at the Marysville Stage Race is my favorite mountain bike event. The course is fast, tight, technical and very fun. And finally, this year, I dug deep into the pain cave, and I felt like myself. Very frankly this was my best mountain bike race effort this year. I knew it the entire ride, I was flowing, through the tight stuff I could feel my handle bars clipping the tress, but I crashed right through, like a skier through gates. I caught my :30 man, I caught my 1:00 man, and I got right on the wheel of my 2:00 minute man, but down the final hill, he stepped on the big ring, and I chased him across the line.

the Torres Family.

I didn't care about my result, I didn't care about the time, I felt freakin' good. I hugged monkey, I was super stoked. In the end out of 43 elite men, experts19-44, and single speeders, I was 16th with a time of 21:26. Yeah, I can live with that...

padawon learner had a dominate weekend. Upgrade coming soon.

A quick shower and a change, followed by an exchange with a fast expert woman, (names left out to protect the innocent) who saw me making a quick towel off and then suit up, she chimed in "I saw fatmarc naked. You not that fat. May be you need a new nick name!" This could make my list of best days ever! If she said I should be "longmarc" then I would have known I was dreaming for sure.

bre la-la 2nd in the marathon.

who knew the fonz was gonna show?

The Zombie Gut

Although Kuhn did a great job with the course, and I saw no real evidence of any zombie infestation on the course, I was also certain there was something undead in my stomach. Shortly after the TT, I started getting weird stomach pains, which lead to multiple trips to the portolet during the night.

monkey's start. she rode well today, I was proud of her.

The next morning, the old Hershey Squirts continued. I tried to think of where a Zombie might had gotten a little bite of me. Perhaps I was reanimating? Maybe along the river? No, I could find no teeth makes, I felt confident I wasn't becoming undead, but still, I felt bad.

All morning I was cold, had chills, and had more trips to the PortoLet than I wanted. Frankly, I could give a rating of each of the portojohns up in the upper camping area, but that might be over the line.

So basically, I decided to bag the cross country. And I felt good about that decision.

Then Justin talked me into kitting up. "Once you kit up and get going you'll feel fine." Sounded good to me, and after riding so well the night before, how could I go wrong?

I lined up with the other 11 expert single speeders and we were off. I went into the woods last, and quickly moved up a spot. Through the twistys we were all staying together nicely, it was actually very fun. I thought to myself, "maybe Justin was right", up the first little climb, I stood on it and passed 5 people, from last to mid pack in one move, that was pretty good.

Then I got that feeling. You know that feeling. The wave of heat that comes, just before an explosion. Where the first thought is, how fast can I make it to a toilet. "it will pass, it will pass" I told myself. I started up the next quick climb, and felt like an explosion was imminent my Henry's shorts. I jumped off the bike. My fellow single speeders flew by me.

I avoided pooping myself, and cautiously started riding again, the single track was fun, and I was carving it pretty well. But I wasn't having a ton of fun, all along I had the fear of the undead filling my shorts with brown nastiness. When I reached our camp site, I pulled the plug and parked the bike. Today, would not be my day.

Oh, well, the weekend was fun, Kuhn puts on a great show, and it was a good time hanging with the monkey. Diane and I rolled up in the toaster, and as neither of us sniffed the podium, we were more than okay with getting out a little early, and getting home to these guys:

respect.

fm