pj pedals bicycles

  The race started and there was almost immediately a group of 6 or so. We were definitely going out too hard, but I got to meet the legend Abe Kaufman which made it worth it. Going into Darnell Creek there were just 3 of us, and we all came out at different times. I rode the next 10 miles solo until I stopped to eat and was caught by Miguel from Boulder and Ben from Greenville. We all stayed as a group pretty much the whole day. Ben broke his chain coming into Moccasin Creek, and me and Miguel slowly rolled thinking he would catch up. He didn’t, so we resumed normal pace going up Wildcat. I wasn’t feeling too great after a hard initial push, but we kept pushing until Tray where we stopped for water at the church at the bottom. It started raining almost as soon as we started the climb, and was pretty heavy a few times going up. Tray wasn’t as bad as I remembered it last year, which was nice, but still absolutely brutal. The first jeep road descent was pretty rowdy especially since ...

I had thought in the few weeks leading up to our start that I was well prepared, but that was far from the case as I discovered in the week leading up. After a chat with Nick a few days before, he reminded me to check my brake pads which had been on the bike for what didn’t seem like all that long. Apparently I was wrong, however, and they definitely needed to be replaced. After checking online, I couldn't find any that would be there before I made the drive up to the start Thursday after work. I sent out a message on team snap on the off chance that someone would have the very specific pads for my brakes. Someone said they did, but after picking them up I determined they were marketed wrong, and didn't even come close to fitting. Through some more last minute scrambling, THE Dana Terry found some at Sixes Pit bike shop, and was kind enough to leave work early to go pick them up. They were the same pads as I had before, so there were no fitment issues, but the front brake rubbe...

  Thursday: Me and my dad were going to head up to Clayton to stay in a hotel Thursday night before the start at 8am on Friday. I took my bike to the shop on Tuesday or Wednesday to have some last minute things done (new chain, brake pads, etc.) I went straight to the shop to pick up my bike when school ended. "There's bad news," was the first thing I heard when I walked through the door. I was told that the extremely small crack that I had gotten on my drive side seat stay had progressively gotten worse, and that it would not be safe to ride. I had been monitoring it, but I guess the progress was too slow for me to realize it was worsening. That was a massive blow. After some frantic calls by my mom, Coach Alex saved me and offered to let me borrow his old bike for the race. I brought it to the shop and with Caleb's help at Adventure Cycles we transferred as much of my fit numbers as we could onto it. Very thankful for good people. After it was as good as we could ma...