Pre prologue. Tired. Heavy legs. Nervous. Why? Don’t know. What you scared of? Don’t know. Actually not much unless I’m nervous. Belly full of nerves. Here for fun. This isn’t fun. This is nerve racking. Soaking up all my energy. Instead of into the pedals it’s into my head. Want to be here until I’m here. Then it’s easy to be somewhere else in my mind, but not physically. I need to be here now. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. For me. For Cissy. It’s dangerous not to be here. I’ve checked out. Gotta check back in by 2:30, when the race starts. Then we have 1:30 minutes before Cissy and I start our prologue. I’m racing against nobody but my head. Basket case. I’ve raced 100’s of times. Nothing on the line. This is supposed to be relaxed and easy. I’m so nervous I almost wish I was working. Gotta break through this nervous energy before it consumes all my good calories and mental energy for the prologue. This is what we do. Why? I guess it’s what we know. I’ve raced in this area twice. The wilderness 101 goes through this area. We rode the prologue yesterday so it’s not like I don’t know what to expect. Beastie Boys just rolled on my mp3 thing. That helps a little, “cause I am most ill and I’m rhyming and stealin”. Feel energy turning. Turning into leadership. Gotta lead Cissy through this race. She looks up to me. Why? Sometimes I’m uncertain. But I do believe this is where I shine…on the bike. It’s where our relationship also shines. We work well as a team, now an opportunity to test it on unfamiliar ground. Let us shine. T69 minutes till race start. Peace.
Warm it up Dave. I’m about to.
A billion butterflies later and I’m back. No…I’m back! Thanks to the prayers and faith in what I am and what I’ve done in this life. Cissy and I both stepped it up. About two seconds after the starter said “go”, I forgot every bit of jittery BS that had been in my mind. What fun. The beginning of the course was newly cut single track around the seven mountains boy scout camp (race venue). This stuff is similar to a wet day in the Pisgah woods; slick roots, twisty and some rocks. We circled around then went out of the camp on some gravel, then to awesome fern forest single track, crested a mountain, descended through about 10 brazillion blueberry plants, back down the mountain, through a Pennsylvania bog and back to the start/finish. There was some sweet rocky single track and some fun descents. The best part was watching Cissy kick it through some swoopy, loamy, rocky single track. She kicked it up about 150% and rode so smooth I just had to yell “woman, yes!” to which she later responded “I couldn’t talk because I thought I was going to throw up the whole time”. Awesome!
We finished with a strong, all out team effort. Tomorrow is billed as the toughest day. 42 miles and some very rocky schtuff.
There were only a handful of “duo” racers so the promoter lumped the "all-male" teams and "coed" teams together under one “duo” category. We finished second behind some dudes from Mass. A lot can happen in six 28-47 miles days of racing. We plan on giving it our best.
TSE 2011 prologue
2nd place duo
1:17
1400 ft climbing
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