Smokin Spoke

What a race! First of all, I have to say this was a great course and we only got to experience a small portion of it now all of you should come up in the spring and do the Rasta Rally. Thanks to the volunteers for a great event and venue. No complaints from this guy.

Not sure what the lap length was, nor do I want to know. I was much more concerned with conserving energy in the early going to make sure I did more passing than being passed in the closing laps and it paid off handsomely. I did place midpack overall, but that may have had something to do with the fact that I started in the rear and stayed there for a little while, but I had plenty of time in the upcoming 3+ hours to make up ground besides, I'm not the type of guy you're going to see wearing the sprinters jersey in the tour I'm more like a landis...wait no drugs....rasmussen....nope again drugs....just more likely to wear the king of the mountains jersey lets put it that way. I'll just call that my curse I'll live and die by it till I grow into a real cyclists body.

No real bottlenecks to report except for the plywood bridge on the first lap where someone brake checked me forcing me off the side before I even got on, but no worries got back on and didn't lose a single spot just kept hammering. I felt awesome on the climbs and even better on the flats, but my second lap was slower, not sure why, but could have been lapped traffic already, pulling on the roads for too long or simply backing off. The third lap greeted me with Don himself making a lap....seemed liked he was having fun out there, and another guy I think Loy was his name from Rhinelander latched onto my wheel and we rode together for the rest of the race.

Only a couple of mishaps. One was clipping a tree with my Ergon grip didn't cause a crash or damage but I was rockin it motocross style for 3.5 laps. Another was clipping a rock with my eggbeater pedal. Again, no damage but signs of cramping accelerated by my leg shooting violently behind me in which I felt it in my hamstring for about 30 seconds until I spun it out. Finally, there was the bridge incident but no damage and no spots lost. The Turner Nitrous once again rose to the occasion saving me from back pains on the rugged singletrack at camp tesomas.

I am very happy about my best result of the year (1st place in 25-29 age group with 2nd place being almost a full 7 minutes back) and a sign that things have gotten back to normal since the weird happenings of the summer. Confidence is high heading into on of my best courses of the series at Kewaskum in which I will work on getting that overall time gap down to a respectable level and make a push for the age group series overall. Congrats to Jesse and Marko once again for taking 1st and 3rd overall. You guys are tearing it up. And Scott, way to bounce back from that crash and bring home the hardware.

It's almost September and it's time to start thinking about next year. I need to answer some questions. Am I going to race, look for sponsorship opportunities, look for a reputable shop, furnish my new basement bar with Twin Six gear and fattire beer signage, how about national races, play some Madden, clean up the Sammy's Subs NFL Prediction Pool, race snocross. The answer is YES!!!! okay not the last one I will not do that again but will ride snowmobiles, XC Ski, bike to work, and snowboard all winter long.....that's right I said winter.

See you at Kewaskum!