My Lucky Day

OMBC Race yesterday at Vulture's Knob. It was my first time at the Knob, and man it was a cool atmosphere. The warm weather brought out a good chunk of like-minded dudes and dudettes, so the starting line was packed.



I think I need to be more competitive or mean or something, as most people pushed in front of me for position on the line, leaving me struggling to pick through people and get to the front of the pack. After busting my ass for a majority of the first lap, I worked my way to the front and was keeping the pace up trying to increase my gap.



All was well... or so I thought

Maybe a half mile before the start of my second lap I got a flat. Shit!

Trying to fix it in the field with my CO2 cartridge and tube, I ended up breaking off the valve stem on my backup tube. Double shit! It was really discouraging to see the entire field passing me, along with novice racers, the women, etc etc, pretty much everyone on the course going by.

So, super dejectedly I ended up picking up my bike and carrying it to the line, planning on telling them that I flatted out and to mark me as DNF. As I got back to the line, someone ended up running up to me and asking what was wrong. What do you know, they had a support tent. I wish I would have realized that before I blew like fifteen minutes fucking around on my back tire and leisurely walking back to the line. Once again, big big thank you to Rody of Groovy Cycleworks and whoever the dude was at the Jamis tent. Lifesavers.

They made quick work of my flat, and I was off again. Finished my first lap in like five minutes after that and was on to lap two. The rest of the race I went as hard as I could, mostly for personal satisfaction, as I figured that the rest of the race was long gone. About half way through my second lap, lo and behold, I started catching people. After picking a good chunk of people off, I ended up in fifth place.

All things considered, I'm pretty happy with it, and I think I'm going to sink some money into a Stan's tubeless conversion to prevent this from happening anymore! For the sake of comparison: my first lap with the flat was 1 hour 7 minutes, and my second was 41 minutes. Pretty nuts.

I've got a decent amount of snaps on my Flickr, so click this picture to check them out.