Cohutta Cat 2023
Pre-Race I had been planning to race since I found the grand depart was coming back this year. I did a 3 day trip last October on the route, so I was familiar with the route. Cedar had done the route several times before, and said a few weeks before that 40 hours would be a quick but attainable goal for me to shoot for. Neil Beltchenko set the FKT at 37:11 in 2018, so naturally I wanted to go for it. Just a 3 hour difference, right? The closer we got to the start, the worse the weather looked. Chad, an absolute monster on the bike if you don't know him, was gung ho about racing which had me nervous because he'd go solo from the gun to never be seen again. Naturally, though, the rain scared him away. The day before the race I was kind of worried about tearing up another drivetrain after the Fried Clay mud massacre. Chad suggested going single speed, and the rest of the group agreed. I'm not sure what made me think that was a good idea as my longest ride on single speed was ...