Monday, June 11, 2007

Lap of Fear

We have a lot of amusing anecdotes to share from this race. Given our disorganized nature, they will appear on this blog non-sequentially and perhaps without sufficient context. Bear with us please. Some of us were drinking a bit much through all of this (see picture).

The Earthlings raced four laps each at Laguna Seca. My final lap occurred at about 4AM in the morning. At this point, I was dead tired and cranking up the hills on my singlespeed had reduced my leg muscles to quivering balloons of lactic acid. So when I approached one tricky descent about 1/3 of the way into the lap, I let my concentration lapse and tumbled off the trail where my bike lay on top of me. I twisted my ankle pretty badly and thought to myself: oh this is great... I can't even walk back now. So I waited a few minutes, contemplated my options, sucked it up and kept riding.

This was definitely the strangest lap. I was half awake and the nighttime brought enough critters near the trail that I started to wonder if I was hallucinating them. I witnessed a snake, rabbit, countless beetles and I think I saw a bobcat. But eventually I made it back to the finish and collapsed into my tent for the night.