Saturday, September 10, 2011

2011 miles to date: 9129
2011 ride time to date: 633 hours 43 min
Previous 365 day miles total: 13194
Previous 365 day hundo total: 62

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

A full 2 days after my finish at the Shenandoah Mountain 100 I finally learn my result. 2nd place Masters in 8:36:54. That's 35 minutes faster than my 2008 finish, which was my only other attempt at this race. I feel really happy with the result. :-)

The top 3 Masters for the 2011 SM100
and for the overall 2011 NUE Masters Series.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Shenandoah Mountain 100


The SM100 is right up there at the top of the list on the NUE calendar when it comes to that sketchy, rocky, east coast style singletrack trail which is kinda like my kryptonite. But, on the plus side, the SM100 also has tons of Herriman-friendly fireroad climbs, so I was still hopeful to be competitive. The race started out great and I made it over the first big climb of the day with no issues. Starting out on the second big climb of the day (mile 12) it was the top three masters in the NUE series (Doug Andrews, Roger Masse, and myself) riding wheel to wheel on the trail. I was the first to drop off as I struggled to keep the bike on the trail in the steep rocky singletrack. I would catch back up to Roger with a flat tire at about mile 20. On the next road I saw a little black bear run across the road about a hundred feet in front of me. That was pretty cool. From there on Roger and I swapped spots several more times as he flatted a second timeand would catch back up in the technical trail. The race seemed to pass by very quickly for me and was mostly uneventful from there until I happened across my good buddy Mike Simonson who'd had a wicked crash. Mike was with medical aid crew and was waiting for a four-wheeler to get him out of the woods. He gave me a message to relay to Michelle that he was just scraped and banged up (I think he was lying to me). It was a scary moment for sure and put things into a different perspective. I finished up the race and then discovered Mike had been air-lifted out. Yikes! Michelle and I packed things up and drove the 60 miles to join Mike in the ER. I missed being able to chat with friends after the race but obviously there are some things that are more important.

2011 Hundo #43 confirmation photo!!  :-)

Counter
hit Counter