time trials weekend

kent and ryan got to town late friday afternoon and were treated to an awesome day of dry trail riding. after their ride they came up to the bar and we waited for scotty, had a couple then moved on to corner. had a good time hanging out but it definitely cut the night's sleep short. got up saturday morning and headed to t-bock's for breakfast. squirrel showed up and met us down there then we all headed to the shop to pick up my bike and grab a couple things. as would be the theme for the weekend, it was wet out. very, very wet. the 5 of us were joined by dan from the cities and we rolled out shortly after 10 to preride the course. it was grease. dead pet was like riding on ice trying to pick your way through all the wet rocks and roots. lots of walking and enough rolling around in the mud to add some humor to the ride. after the ride i had to get cleaned up and head to work while the others went back to the shop to clean bikes and build scotty's jabber. the guys came out to the bar for dinner later and luckily i was able to get out early and get some much needed sleep.
sunday morning woke to more rain after a night full of thunderstorms. squirrel and ryan passed on helping us build an ark and headed back to dsm so kent scotty and i headed to registration to see what the story would be for the course. no pali. this would eliminate probably the biggest threat to people's safety by not having to ride the rock garden. see a bunch of the usuals, b.s. a bit, pick starting times, head back to the apt to get ready. trevor was going off first, followed by fuhrman and kent. couple other guys in the mix then i followed scotty and was 7th off. short version of the race is i rode well. conservative, but that was intentional. i could have ridden faster but i don't know that my time would have been better. every corner was drifting on the verge of washing out and laying it down. any time gained by riding faster would be lost with one crash so i chose to focus on keeping the bike upright. in the end it worked out for me. walked 3 climbs and put a foot down a couple other times but rode and cleaned a ton more than i thought i would going into the race. good enough for 3rd overall. shively won it and fuhrman was second. shively is a perennial top 3 here and fuhrman just won the 80 mile ss at ouachita and is basically a local. i can handle getting beat by those guys any day. i was done racing by 11 and we were having beers in my garage by noon. awards were a riot and i scored a sweet home made set of pbr fenders as well as some cash for 3rd. by 2 a.m. i had spent basically all of my winnings in 3 different bars and it was time for scotty and i to get some sleep. apparently having one more in the garage and staying up til 3 seemed appropriate. slow day today for sure. now focusing on getting organized for trans and spending most of the week off the bike and resting. big congrats to shively and fuhrman as well as kent for throwing down a top 5, scotty for a top 25, and troy for getting into the top 3rd of the field. doug gets the animal award for running with his bike on his shoulder through all of mother's day and boa after ripping his rear der off. big thanks to the volunteers. it was miserable out there and this race (any race) absolutely does not happen without them. pics later.