Yazoo Crew goes down to the Snake

The weekend that we have all been looking forward to around the Chattanooga area has finally come and gone. The first installment of the Snake Creek Gap Off-road Time Trial was today and I think we had 11 registered Yazoo riders in the 34 mile SS class today. My thanks go out to the race organizers for dealing with us and allowing our shenanigans and starting all together. It makes it fun for us and we appreciate your patience.

Jason came by and picked me up around 7:15am for the 40 minute drive to Dalton, GA. We arrived in plenty of time to get a full dose of Bruce on the mic before we tried to load up for the caravan to the start. With a super overloaded school bus, we had to drive ourselves to the start which was about 35 minutes away. We arrived at the start and organized our crew and rolled out 13 deep.

I wanted to start strong and see how I felt around the half way point. Simple plan and easy to maintain, remember it's January. This race was my litmus test for the season. I need something to start basing other races off of. Sounds trite, but as long as I know I have climbed something bigger, steeper, longer than the one I am on at the moment, I have additional confidence that I can clean it. It seems to work more times than not, so I am sticking to it. Anyway, I had a pretty good day of racing for January. I was 1o minutes off the amazingly fast Dougie Fresh from the ATL, so I have some work to do this month to see about shaving some additional time off. I know of several places that I could have hit it harder if I was not worried about cramping up. Which happened anyway, about the last mile of single track before the final decent and my legs went haywire. I was pushing on a not so steep section just to do a different motion with the legs. It worked and I avoided the pirate-like fate of the "double peg leg" but just barely. Must drink more water. It was chilly all day so I never felt thirsty even though I pounded three bottles today on the trail.

The Snake was just as I remembered it, steep, rocky and exhausting. The final few miles are the hardest in my and many others opinion. After a long day of climbing, the last section is super technical and almost entirely uphill. A few rollers are tucked in just to give you a false sense of completion then more uphill work must be done. At the very top of the final climb is a water tower that has become my beacon of hope. When you can see the tower, you have a quick decent on a fire road then a bombing downhill on the road that leads you to the finish.

After the race we hung around the lot for an hour or so until the rest of our crew made it in and had a chance to chill. The times were posted and most everyone had a better day than their best time last year, so we are all improving. Going to chill out today and ride the rollers this evening to spin out the leg funk. Looking forward to some more Tuesday and Thursday night rides between now and the next Snake in Feb. Thanks to all of the Yazoo crew for making the trip down to North Georgia and thanks to Jason for the ride there and back.

Finally, I received my too bad so sad email from the SSWC08 folks...looks like I will not be competing in Napa this year. Ever since 2005 it seems the event keeps getting weirder...soon it will be like doctors and lawyers riding Harley's and ruining it for the true hardcore. But Good Luck to all of those who did manage to send a supersonic email at whatever time it was for you at 12AM PST.