157:Western PA/West Virgina 4-Charm City 0

E-town end of lap one:

This is Dirty Harry's. They fueled by the Spreng family soundly put a foot in our Baltimore/Delaware asses this past weekend. Justin is a really good guy, and was a part of a sick fast team from Dirty Harry's who always put their best foot forward at the 24hr races. Good to them.

All in all we put up a good fight, but the western PA/ West Virgina boys did what I would expect them to do, which was hold court. The torrential down pours from earlier in the week left the course with many muddy sections, that required a lot of power, and solid technique. The Big Bear course is one of the more technical courses I see, and with the extra layer of slickness, we put up a good fight, but in the end the hometown boys really kicked our ass.

C3-Sollay.com had two teams. C3P0s (auer, johnny, e-town and I) and Young and the restless (young, norman, meatball, and Kennedy). The C3P0s finsihed 5th out of 10 expert men teams, while Young and the restless was 7th. C3p0s were 6th over all teams, and Y and R were 17th.

I'd like to think had the conditions been dry, as they were 2 years ago, we could have made it more interesting. But alas, there are no wouldas, shouldas in this game. Props to Dirty Harry's, Pittsburgh Pro, Wamsley Cycle, and CCCA. In the end I felt like we had our asses kicked, but had a great time. See full results here. And we got some props on the race blog, that should be good for the sponsors.

Personally I will admit I felt a little disappointed in myself. First Friday night a friend of Auer's stopped by and said she was making a beer run. She was going to bring me some High Life. Alas my mouth was watering for the champagne of beers. 8:00 came and went, as did 9:00, and 10:00, finally I went to bed, thirsty, and stood up. Completely disappointed.

From a riding standpoint, I never felt good this weekend. I think the mud neutralized some of the power increases I have made this year, and I never lived up the expectations of what I know am capable. Frankly, the legs never felt great, I couldn't stay on top of the gear. I wanted to do more, but I couldn't. My teammates really killed themselves, I did my best, but this weekend my best wasn't great. I was very proud of them all, but felt like somehow, I didn't hold up my end of the deal. Such is life. No excuses, I'll do better next time.

This is Tinker Juarez, Olympian, multi-time national champion, Endurance Racing Monster.

On my first lap, I saw him up a climb, and I attacked to him, and then I dropped him. So what if it was his 3rd lap and only my first. On my list of goals for life : drop Tinker on a climb, has now been checked off. SWEET!

I was so stoked to get this shot just before the start of the race. I climbed up the fly over and made Ethan look up as I snapped this picture. I started chanting in my best Chris Rock voice "E-town! E-town !" Sadly, E-town in a somewhat panicked manner informed me he forgot his tools, and that I needed to hand him off some...

PMP (potty mouthed princess) and I raced to the camp site, grabbed my tools and I dashed off to a far section of the course to meet E-town and pass him some tools "Just in case" something went wrong. Thankfully nothing did, and E-town came in the top 5 overall.

In this picture Mayhew gives me the finger as PMP gets ready to put her foot in Mayhew's ass for suggesting that a stripper getting a boob job is like a businessperson getting an MBA. You know because it's an investment in their career that will result in them having more green in their pocket.
I can follow that logic. It looks like to me that the new "granny" might have made an investment in herself that the old "granny" didn't have.

There were many great exchanges between Auer and Johnny this weekend. My favorite was this one:



Auer: "so we were at this party, and they had one of those inflatable things that you jump around in..."

Johnny:" Jesus, Auer, it's called a fucking moon bounce, a fucking moon bounce Auer..."

that was really funny to hear...

Mayhew did a great job wrenching for us. Here are his tools.

Yeah, that's a sweet espresso machine. Mayhew hooked us all up...

Monkey and PMP also did a wonderful job supporting us, making sure people ate, and had food to eat, and doing the all important math in the morning trying figure how many more laps we would get. Here Monkey chills in our sweet, sweet hammock...

My support system and a huge part of my nice spring season, PMP and Monkey, and My two Chrises (Mayhew and Auer). Mayhew has been excellent as a coach and mentor, Auer is an awesome team director and resource as well. The sitcom will debut after kimbo slice's next fight.

Young:

So here's my single favorite exchange of the entire race. Middle of the night, I'm finishing a night lap in my black Henry's kit. I roll into the exchange and find Johnny waiting for me. I call his name and he looks up. I pass the baton to the judge, scan out. Johnny is just standing there looking at me. He looks a little puzzled. I ask, "Johnny you okay!?" He looks up and finally realizes it's me. "Oh Crap!" Johnny exclaims as his scans out and proceeds to grab my bike and head for the trail. I ask Johnny "dude, you want my bike?" Johnny starts laughing, along with me, the official and the small crowd waiting for their next riders. "Aw man!" he smiles and runs off into the night, jumping on his own bicycle...

E-town after lap 5:

I had a lot of fun this weekend, really proud of my teammates, and our efforts, very grateful for all the support we got. Thanks for reading...

I'm going to finish my beer and go to sleep for a very long time now.

respect.

faticus