Wilderness 101....

I would not have thought about doing the 101 this year if a bunch of fun, cool guys were not up to it. Eddy Krall, Says, and Geronimo all had a room and Eddy gave me a ride up, so what the heck.

Short:
Rode hard, its hot, no bad luck, best finish ever.

Long:
Registered on Thursday, got my stuff together Friday.

The usual prerace craziness / nervousness was all around. Somehow I ended up being the experienced guy in the room. That was kind of nuts to me. Geronimo has been racing forever, but has somehow never done a hundred mile mtb race. His second is going to be Leadville. Haha.

-Up at 5am. Walk to the gas station for hot water for my french press. Cant stomach any food.

-Nerves.

-Race starts. Good pace on the first climb.

-First descent, some dude elbows me off the road. I make it back on. Dude is a dickhead. I facebook stalked the dude when I got home. He is a conservative christian and is into christian rap and christian contemporary rock. Yet he had no issues bumping me off a wheel at 35+ mph. I guess it is kind of ironic being that I would never do that in a million years and I have listened to little other than Venom for the week leading into the race. I seriously hate bike racers sometimes.

-Stay with front group until the third climb. There was a bottleneck that I was last out of and I never saw them again.

-Rode with freaking Mark McCormack for 20 miles. He was pulling like a freight train. We slowly dropped the companions of our group. I had to announce to the whole group that he is the only dude who has won USPRO and Cross nats. Duh. He had a frame pump! A FRAME PUMP! I told him about how my friend beat his brother for a preme in a crit where mark led his bro out. "impressive." was all he said. It ruled.

-Had to say goodbye to mark on the big climb. From this point on, I was on my own. I manged to catch 2 or 3 more dudes and just go through them. I figured that I was in 12 place or so. I based this on the fact that I am usually around 12th place.

I rolled in, cleaned up, swam, ate, drank and signed up for a massage before I checked to learn that I got 6th. I was stoked.

I must say that the 101 was one of the best put on races that I have ever done. At one point I simply rode up to an aid station, people put bottles in my cages, and food in my pockets. Seriously the best volunteers ever. I highly recommend this event to anybody looking for a sick adventure or a rad race.

Garmin File (I think the GPS has trouble in the trees)

Maybe I should listen to some christian rock if I wanted to turn into some sort of homicidal asshole.