Tall Oaks

Last sunday was my second trip to Jeff City to race in the Tall Oaks Challenge. Great course, great promoters and a great showing of KC folks (read Ethos). I decided to team up with beanpole JPB-rocket this year. Weather was temptingly perfect in the pit area but just steamy enough in the woods to have me eye ball f*&king the lake every chance I could get. The good old hillybilly shotgun technique was used to signal the start of the race and 6 hours later the end. In between gun shots a metric ton of flossing bikes through trees took place, enough so to make a dental hygienist need to change their panties. Riders quickly emerged from the woods with ear to ear grins. Everyone had a good time and raced well. Beanpole and I fared well enough taking 6th in the overall behind some very fast duo teams, But I must give him some major credit for that scorcher of a first lap that he threw down. Teams of Hoppe-JDoug and Sarah-Jamie were not to far behind us. Travis and Garet won, big surprise there. In the Solo division, ladies in green dominated with Kay climbing to the top of the podium and K-Rocket taking Third. Mens Solo saw Coletrain taking a solid fourth and Sean miraculously avoiding a DFL. Sean didn't get much credit for his chivalry that day, so here it is. He witnessed a pretty bad wreck a mile into the race and stopped to help the woman, who he ended up walking back to the starting area. He then stupidly cut through the woods to try and find his bike which only got him lost. By the time he found it the second lap racers were whipping by him as he was running to his rusty tank. Sorry I meant trusty tank! Being a lap down 30 minutes into the race he just had plain fun riding his bike the rest of the day.

Oh yeah, within 10 minutes of finishing the race I was all over that lake action like white on rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm. It felt good, except for the part when my legs cramped like mad trying to get back up onto the dock. Clean, beer, awards, Soccer mom van loaded. 60 minutes to Sedalia for some small town mexican food. The kind of place that you know you're rolling the diarrhea dice by just crossing the threshold. It actually tasted decent enough, but that could be due to the fact that I had just come from a endurance mountain bike race!