Burn Baby Burn

Holiday weekends are always great. It's like a surprise day off that usually turns into an elaborate travel adventure and this year was no different. After work on Friday, I came home and began sorting all of my riding and camping gear that we would need for the extended weekend that would consist of a 24hr race followed by some socializing in Asheville with JutRut and Ty. It was going to be a full on family trip with Mrs. Pills and our four legged fuzzy son Gunnar. By the time I had everything packed into the car, it was nearly 10PM and I decided to take a short nap and leave early in the morning. 3:30AM came way too soon. We made some coffee and hit the road shortly after 4. The trip to NC was great, all the holiday traffic had made it to their destination and the roads were very easy to travel. We made it to the Dark Mountain Trails around 9:30 with time to set up camp and register. This year I was racing with a 5 man team, a first for me...have done many 4 man teams, but never a 5. Also, it has been a few years since the last time I competed in the Burn event. And without saying, this is still a well organized and most of all FUN event. The trails are not very challenging, but are tons of fun.

The race went well for us...we finished in 7th out of 25 teams which was respectable but nothing to write home about. My only goal was to turn some decent lap times and not be too far off the fastest times. Being the only rigid single speed on our geared full suspension team was a hoot. I was only a minute or so off of Jason which was fine with me...I was consistently in the 38 to 40 minute range with 1 lap at 41 minutes due to some heavy night traffic. I never feel good about being that guy that makes bad passes for a few shaved seconds. So in this instance, I followed a pretty quick female rider down the 2nd big decent with the brakes on...once we were in a safe spot, I quickly passed and went all out to pick up the lost time, with no avail.

The funny thing that I noticed most of all in this race was the hot laps are a thing of the past for me. Back in the day, I could bust out some fast lap times and felt pretty good about it, but usually fell short sometime in the early morning with the usual stomach cramps or something like that. This year, the team event almost seemed easy for me. I think that hitting the throttle for 35 to 40 minutes just got me warmed up, then I had to stop. We did one round of double laps and I actually had warmed up and started to feel good. I did get passed once during my second lap by someone who obviously was sitting around waiting their turn because I was not going slow and they came around me pretty quick. So I did the logical thing and latched onto his wheel and blasted the speakers even louder just to make sure he knew he did not drop me. I went back out a few more times and was the last to go out for one more right before the cut off time at noon. It was a lap for glory rather than purpose, but I did not want to miss out. It was actually a really nice lap, there were very few riders out on the course and the trail was in perfect condition.

All in all it was a really good time. The dog behaved better than I expected and the wife had a pretty good time hanging out with other bike widows from Chattanooga. Many thanks to Krystal's and the Scenic City Velo gang for adding me to their race roster. It was nice to be a hired gun even though we did not podium. But I will say, the competition was solid. I shot the breeze with the Dickman for while and even got heckled by him a time or two, but what's new there. We packed up and began the drive to Asheville shortly after the race was over.

We cut through the mountains between Boone and Old Fort to get to Asheville and this was absolutely gorgeous country. Curvy mountain roads and beautiful scenery were coupled with blue skies and puffy white clouds. Mrs. P took the wheel and I nodded off for a little while and caught up on my beauty rest. When we arrived at the Crow's Nest, we were greeted by Ty. We hung out for a little while then JutRut made it home. He was scoping a new pumptrack in the Asheville area...looks like another venue for the Enduro de Ocho...more to come on that. We decided to hang out at the Nest and grill out for the evening. After some killer chow, we checked out a graffiti and b-boy documentary then called it a night.

We woke up early and had some breakfast. Jut was going out for an all day ride from North Mills to Bent Creek and back, which would have been way more than I could enjoy, especially after a 24hr event. Bennett came over and he and Jut rolled out, Des and I took off and Ty slept in. We drove up to Craggy Gardens via the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked around a bit to stretch the legs. We cruised back into town, stopped for lunch at Greenlife, then hit the road back to Chatty.
The weather has been pretty wet since we have been home, so the riding has been nil. Going to Nashie this weekend to hang out with the family and have a relaxing weekend. Thinking about driving back up to Knoxville for the Disc Burner 12hr event the following weekend...anyone interested in going, please drop a line.