Apprehension

I'm due for my first night lap in about 1 hour. It's 9:00pm or so, so that leaves me with a 10ish to 11ish lap, under the moon and stars. Being 8 or so miles from the ocean, it gets cold here damn fast once the sun is gone. The sun is gone and it's damn cold here.

So my 2nd lap was amazingly inspiring and amazingly frustrating. Birdsong's cousin offered me some Ginseng + B12 cocktail right before I hit the trails, and it really gave me an energy buzz to that got me all the way from the start to the top of Hurl Hill (aptly named) before I was really feeling tired. However, I was absolutely plagued with mechanicals from about the top of Hurl Hill all the way until I got back. My chain must have fallen off at least 10 times, always at the worst times as I was bombing down single track or down fire road. I was really frustrated by this as I was on target to make an absolute killer lap time, probably 1:03 or so. But it wasn't meant to be, as not only did I drop my chain a bunch, but I actually lost my rear brake about 4 miles from the end. Ugh...

Lap highlight was barreling down some single track and hearing my name called out. Turned out to be none other than Forrest Arakawa taking pictures of the riders. He made a point of screaming to the 3 people behind me that they were 'riding behind a legend, an absolute legend!'

Awesome.

Anyway, I'm in my tent now, well fed, hydrated, and hopefully prepared for a lap in the dark.

Here's a picture from earlier today. Possibly our competition, though who knows at this place.



And here's Bob + Birdsong, doing something that I am unsure of.