Giver-8-er

I remember I mentioned in a blog entry last year that I couldn’t really dislike enduro events without trying them first. For reasons unknown, I’m actually starting to see the fun in them…maybe it has something to do with being a Deadgoat. I was originally going to do the race solo but then I talked to Justin and he seemed interested in trying the race so we signed up as a 2-man relay team instead as this was going to be more of a fun race for me now as my mountain biking focus seems to be more on enduro this year.

In the week leadin up to the event while helping the team with a little bit of course maintenance and riding the course a few times…it looked like we were going to have the best Giver-8-er conditions ever. Everything was dry and the trail was mint. The next week the forecast just seemed to get worse every day. It was near the end of May and it was raining, snowing and really cold….it felt like what March should have been.

The day before the race just seemed like a recipe for disaster. There was sleet in the morning and the course was extremely muddy. We were still determined to run the race as we were already past the deadline to call it off. Our decision was to eliminate a couple sections of the course as they were going to be either extremely dangerous or bogs. As the conditions seemed to get worse, I was really not looking forward to bringing out my Faze and risk having to replace my barely used drive train. I really wanted to race…but I didn’t think it was worth it to trash my race bike for what was supposed to be a fun race for me.

I now had a few concerns about the race. The first being my partner still wanting to race in the conditions and the second being which bike I wanted to ride. After watching a rider pre-ride the course on his single-speed mountain bike…I talked with a few people on my team and decided that now would probably be a good time to build up my single-speed frame. After finishing up helping the team with the course, I went home to start putting my bike together. After mounting the cranks and wheels, I brought it over to Tim who helped me finish up the build in just over an hour. I took it for a test ride around the block and it seemed good enough to attempt to race the next day.

The next day, conditions were cold but it had stopped raining and snowing for the most part. I brought both my 1X1 and my Prophet bikes with me…just in case I had a mechanical with the single-speed. I met up with Justin and we set up in the team feed zone. Justin started the race as I wasn’t sure about riding a single-speed with a whole ton of people on the course at the same time and I didn’t want to hold people up when I had to get off and walk. We decided to switch off every lap as it was pretty cold and it would give us shorter breaks in the pit. Just enough time to refuel and clean off the bikes.

Justin finished off his first lap and now it was time for my first real ride on a single-speed mountain bike. I took off from the team pits…as fast my legs and 32 X 20 setup would let me. I got to the first hill…and I was totally surprised that I could pedal up with no problems. I continued to climb until the fairly steep rocky climb into the first section of single-track. This is where I decided to dismount and walk as there was still a lot of course and I didn’t know how my legs would hold up. The course was muddy…but not as bad as it could have been. I had to walk a few sections as I would lose traction when I had to stand up to pedal up some steep sections but overall there were only like 3 sections that were really bad.

Each subsequent lap the course was actually drying out and I was also able to pedal up more stuff as I got used to the single-speed bike. Single-speeding was pretty different for me…it tooks me a couple laps to get into it…but honestly…it really take a lot of your mind when you’re not worried about your drivetrain seizing up or ghost shifting. The course is a pretty hard one with lots of short power climbs so it was actually pretty good training for single-speeding technique.

The only thing I didn’t really like about the single-speed is it’s really hard on your back and your arms. At the end of each lap my lower back would get really tight so I had to stretch in between laps. My arms weren’t really that sore…but they were getting a good workout from all the side-to-side motion needed to torque my bike up all the climbs.

As we approached the end of the day, Justin went out for his final lap and warned me that he wasn’t sure if he’d be back in time for me to do one more lap. He had quite a bit of time…but he was getting tired but he still went out to throw down one more lap. I was also pretty tired and was concerned about needing more time than usual to finish my lap. With an hour remaining in the race, Justin came screaming into the lap zone and left me an hour to get my last lap done. I took off on my last lap and was pretty tired but determined to get in a 5th lap so I could tie with my number of laps from the previous year. Even though I was tired, I rode way more stuff then my previous laps as the ground was now really tacky with only a couple really muddy spots. I finished off my laps with some time to go and I was officially completely exhausted.

Although I didn’t do more laps then I did the year before…I’m quite happy that I got 5 laps down with no crashes, mechanicals and my first time on a single-speed bike. Justin also did awesome for his first mountain bike race and also had no major crashes or mechanicals. Perhaps I’ll bring the single-speed out for more ride and try to get a more of a feel for it…my team seems to really enjoy them.

Big thanks to the team for putting on a great event and everyone showing up and soldiering on despite the conditions. Also a big thanks to Tim and Gerry for helping me put together my single-speed bike the day before the race. It was great pulling after every lap and everyone asking me how I like the single-speed. Although I wasn’t in love with it at the start of the race…I really liked how I could just ride it and not have to worry about anything. It was also sufficiently hard…no granny gear to fall back on…so it really tested my limit as to how hard I could push myself to make it up some pretty steep climbs that I really did not want to walk.