What an exciting couple of weeks it has been. 6/28 - 7/6 I basically went nuts with the family out of town and did 200+ trail miles. The cool part was that half of those miles were done with Brian and we were able to travel and change up venues, even made it out to Pontiac. The really cool part is that I got a front row seat to Brian taking flight over his handlebars. In all my years of riding this is the first doumented trip of Brian going over the bars. I joke about it because he is okay and it wasn't a huge crash. Just a case of not having enough speed to clear a log pile....and for record it was a large log pile and he bit in on the way dwn the opposit side.
Next up was my trip to my cottage in Canada. Was nice to get away and relax after all those miles on the trail. I gave myself a few days of rest and then took to the Canadian hills for a few rides on my road bike. Up there you are either climbing a hill close to single digit speeds or you are decending a hill at 35+ mph. Reaching over 40 mph is not uncommon even when you are not pedaling. I decended at over 50 mph once last year. Not sure how i feel about that. I have found that 45 mph is my comfort limit. Any faster and the wind in my ears gets to loud and I start to wonder what would happen if I punctured a tire while going that fast.
After returning to work and talking to Captain Terror I got the low down on the Boyne Marathon.Jeff, Scotty and Alex were the only ones who made it up there for the event. Jeff pulled down a 3rd place medal is Expert Men's 30-39 with a time of 3:58:11. Alex won the Beginner Men's 15-18 with the time of 2:33:59 and Scotty unfortunately did not finish. Word is an injury from earlier in the week flared up and caused him to stop. Hopefuly some rest time will help him heal and get him back out there soon. I am not sure of the lengths everyone did in terms of miles but I do know Boyne is known for it's abnormally large hills and this course is not for the weak. Great job to all three who made it out there to race. Three racers and two medals, that's awesome. That means again Team Signoutfitters.com was announced over the loud speaker after the race.
Other honorable mentions: Chris Maltby from Mysinglespeed.com. He races Expert Men's 30-39 but does it on a single speed. I narrowly escaped him at the Stony Marathon a couple weeks back and he was only 5 minutes behind Jeff at Boyne finishing 4th. You are crazy Chris! My boy Brad Lako from Flying Rhinos made the trip out to Boyne as well. Unfortunately he broke a pedal early on in the race and had to throw in the towel. I feel for you brother. I have been racing against Brad for 3 years now and he has always been a great opponent. He and his wife recently had thier first baby but he is getting back on the saddle so look out for a late season surge from him.
This concludes this weeks reviews. Next up is the Ruby Campground XC this Sunday. Approx 5 Mile loop with some good climbs, good flow and 2 water crossings. This is always a fun race and from the sounds of it we will have a great team turn out. Highlights for the coming weekend event:
1 - The Brian vs Gerry battle.....who will triumph at Ruby, the tortoise or the hare?
2 - The Aryn vs Jason (RBS) battle......Jason plans to unveil some new components this weekend but does he know Aryn made some drivetrain changes for the coming weekend?
3 - My son Ashton may decided to race his new 18" wheel bike....it's got hand brakes and pegs.
4 - The Amber Alert 2008 debut......will Amber race this weekend?!?!
Tune in next week to hear the exciting conclusions.......
Keep your head up and the tires floating...we have some deep water to cross this weekend.
Aryn
