|hardest and funnest XC marathon race yet!|
|'Twas a glorious campsite|
June 25th was day of the Fat Tire 40. If you thought the mountainbike Colorado State Championships were hard (I accidentally/intentionally took the long course instead of the short), oooh buddy; you've never done The Fat Tire 40 in Crested Butte. The reasons for doing this event was two-fold: a) Crested Butte's the shiz-noid; and b) even though I hold The Firecracker 50 in very high esteem, I needed another quality race to break up the Firecracker 50 same-o, same-o years of back to back to back to back to back racing.
|This range is behind our campsite!|
|Ain't it purty?|
In the morn o' Friday, my bowels (and sometimes the letter "Y", aka Old Faithful) are telling me to shake a tail feather and before I walk the 200 or so meters to the Casa of Dueces, I grab my camera and Bianca. One of the more unique flora here is what the locals call Skunk Cabbage. Its scientific name is Veratrum californicum. It ain't so good for grazing but once it blooms it sure is aesthetically pleasing. I bring my parka because it's around 40-45°F in the morning. The Bonks and the parka-ed I, proceed to walk up to the entrance of our campsite.
|The one and only...Bonks!|
|Here's the damage inflicted from the 40!|
I interrupt the story for today's lesson: For you roadies, the difference between road racing (I started out as a road racer, in fact I'm a Cat III) and mountain biking is: burning matches vs rotating flywheel. There are so many attacks in road racing you burn metaphorical matches to stay with the attackers hoping to drop the group. The one with more matches to burn as the finish line approaches generally wins unless you have a sandbagger that made the final selection or your sprint can't be detected with current technology. With mtb racing, you hitch yourself with a group whose flywheel matches more or less the torque of the collective flywheel. Yeah you can attack but it's not very efficient in marathon XC events. The mtb bike winner has a combination of a very large (rotating) flywheel or is a savant on the downhills or weighs 135 lbs (61 kg) and climbs like a billy goat. Can I get an Amen (amen, brother!)? Now back to the story....
Ouch! Finally we drop back down to a service road where another racer grabs my wheel but I bury myself (turn you sumbitch flywheel, turn!) towards town and march the largest gear I have in my single chainring Intense in a breezy headwind and little by little a gap opens up in such a way I have time wave to my Karen as I cross the finish line. Did I finish respectably? Prolly not but finish I did, boi!!
|Thank you Niky's!|
|course profile and elevation gain/contour|
|Karen trailblazing with our pooch faithfully following|
The Lupine Trail: Bianca's a great trail dog. Karen's attempting to show Bianca how to drink out of a Camelbak spigot/bite; if she ever figures that out, Bianca'd be even greater. She'll follow whoever's up front faithfully but we go fairly slow in order to not wear out her pads or her.
We have to be careful when we cross cattle guards but Bianca's slowly figuring that out too. What's cool about this trail is when you're not bobbing and weaving through tight singletrack, it kind of reminds you that there are drop-offs that could really ruin your day. Here's Karen negotiating a lefty-loosey curvey-curve with a major drop-off should you fly off the single track.
|flowing left with Crested Butte in the far, right distance.|
Our ride punctuated the end of a magical 4-day get away to dem dere hills with equally magical companions of the two and four legged variety.
-Fat Tire 40=evil genius from the minds of Crested Butte.
-We ride/race so's we can eat.
-Karen's a unicorn.
PS: Karen just checked the results and I finished 4th out 14 in my division which is 50+ open men. Average, baby.