Mohican Wilderness: DNF!

Bummed about Mohican Wilderness yesterday.

I was feeling good, and looking forward to racing at a course that really suited my strengths: climbing like crazy, and a nice open field section to put the hammer down in.

The race started off well, I was third wheel going into the singletrack, when a unnamed person decided to chop the corner and try to cut everyone off. He got shut down pretty quickly, but it caused a big pileup that pretty much stopped everyone. I thought I was going to get around it, but in the middle of doing so, someone crashed into me and I had to dab a foot.

Nonetheless, I got out of the pileup relatively unscathed. Into the field, it was Steve Twining in first, Jeff Pendlebury in second, me in third and Ben Ort in fourth. Ben and I would go back and forth on sections of the trail.

All was going well, and I was feeling strong. Us four had a pretty good gap going, and I was feeling consistent. Then; what do you know, bike problems.

I was railing a turn right before the chute and I went down. I was a little curious why this happened as I wasn't too off balance, and the trail was super grippy. I shook it off and figured it was just a fluke.

After that, riding on, I noticed the front end of my bike started feeling a little funky, I thought maybe that I fungo'ed something on the crash. I didn't want to lose any more time so I kept going and tried to do some mid ride diagnosing.

When I dismounted for the downed tree, I had a chance to grab my front tire and give it a squeeze. Holy piss it had about ten psi in it. My tire must have been too low intially, and it folded / burped on that turn, and that's why I went down. It all started making sense.

So I had to stop, got out the CO2 cartridge, no big deal, and got my front tire inflated again. Good to go... but wait. I have the worst problem with my Stan's valve cores unthreading themselves all the time. Today was no exception. As I unthreaded my CO2 tool, the valve core started coming with it. I saw this and tried to stop it, but without needlenose pliers, I was pretty much out of luck. My next strategy was to cover my open valve stem with my finger. Get my valve core out of my inflator with my teeth (ouch), and do a quick switch by removing my finger and putting the valve core back in.

I did this, but it didn't work too well. I ended up with the same 10 psi I started with, albeit 15 minutes after I first stopped.

By this time I was pretty much in dead last, and it was a long walk back to a pump.

Resigned to my fate, I threw in the towel and moped back to the car. DNF.

Steve ended up winning, with Jeff in second. They're unstoppable this year.

Rudy killed everyone in the Sport 50 plus age group, winning by a healthy margin, and Robert was plagued with some mechanical problems too, but was able to post up a good time on a tough course.

Cohutta this weekend, if I can make it through the workweek in one piece.