Friday, May 01, 2009

Decorah Mud Fest

After several years of wanting to race the Decorah Time Trial and not doing it for various reasons/excuses, I finally did it. Well, it wasn't the ideal year, but the racing got done. The weekend prior and after the race were great weather. The actual weekend of the race was rainy and cool.

On the drive down with Dustin, we went through a couple of heavy showers, which had us thinking of DNF strategies. I was debating on which rear tire to run, the stock Bontrager Jones 2.2 that came with my X-Cal or a Specialized Captain 2.0 that I just bought. I left the Bontrager on the rim, which turned out to be the wrong decision.

The course was very muddy - I ended up walking a lot of the uphills because there was no traction, and even walking some of the downhills near the end because I couldn't even steer. Several times I had to clear mud out of the rear chainstays because they were so full of mud the bike stopped rolling.

Check out the photos. I bent a chain link and removed paint in several locations of the chain stays.






Anyway, good times were had by all, I think I am catching the racing bug, although I wish I would have started this 10 years ago before I had a mortgage and kids...