Vulture's Knob Three

After a week-long sabbatical off the bike to recoup from Mohican, the Vulture's Knob race was upon me.

It ended up being a pretty shitty race for me, but it happens.

The expert class was a bit thin, with the Big Bear 2x12 going on, the field was split.

I ended up getting a good start, and there was no carnage this time, so that's good. I took the lead by the gravity dropper, and was feeling good enough. My legs didn't have much snap, but I'll blame that on Mohican. As long as I rode smart I should be doing ok.

Then something interesting happened... I was going to ride the goldfish pond skinny, and what do you know... It wasn't there! The recent rains must have floated it away from it's normal spot. I was screwed.

Everyone else went through the reroute, and I lost probably twenty seconds trying to tip-toe across the slippery, shaky skinny. Yikes!

After that I knew I didn't have the legs to chase back on the main group, so it was into survival mode hoping to stay steady and pick off people as they fell off the pace due to the heat and humidity.


Thanks to Roberto for the pic.

That was going ok until the chainsuck started. That threw a bit of a wrench in my plans. Then I flatted the 3rd lap. Crap! I put a little too much faith in my Stan's and didn't have a tube with me, so when it wouldn't seal back up, I was walking. Thanks to Tim Carson, who had a tube an extra CO2, and bailed me out from having to walk the rest of the lap.

Hopefully I can get my legs back under me this week. The Wayne Ultra is coming up in 2 weeks, so I'm trying to get back to full steam by then. We'll see.

Mohican 100

This picture summarizes it...



I was feeling fantastic, sitting in the top ten-ish for the first 40 miles or so. Then I cracked in the most terrible way I've ever experienced. My stomach must have not liked the mix of high temperatures, humidty, and perpetuem, and I started dry heaving at the sign of any kind of exertion. Not good.

I rode backwards until the 4th aid station where I was going to throw in the towel. After some help from Juan(thanks!), and encouragement from Ethan, I got back on my bike after an hour and a half of sitting around feeling like death.

We braved tornado sirens, and I finished up with an official time of 10:40. I don't know if I ever want to do another 100 miler again.