wet spandex

is a good way to describe this weekend... have you ever tried to put spandex on while there's drops and streams of sweat covering every part of your body? it's a mess. you start by putting your foot in the hole while your still sweating... then you are all nervous so you wanna do it quick, cuz god forbid someone see you naked. you get your leg in and then you pull them up... but the only thing that comes up is the elastic for the waist because the bottom is still wrapped around your ankles. so essentially your spandex are tights right now. so now that your good and bad parts are covered you bend over (i'm sure a beautiful site) and start maneauvering and grunting to get them up. and then you pick at them for the next 10 minutes. i think if sara shook her head saturday while changing her tires she'd have given us all a shower! it was so frickin' hot!
it was a slow start for our drive up to devil's head. we watched the tour stage and it was too exciting to bust out. luckily we had packed the night before so the only thing we had left was pack the element. we dropped casey and carbon off and headed out. we ran into some traffic on the way up near schaumburg. i must've stared at the bright blue ikea building for a good half hour. that sucked! we finally passed a construction something or other. i have no idea what they were doing.
anyway it was a pretty uneventful trip up... til we got the resort anyway. right as we are ready to turn in a cop put orange cones in the turning lane and had us stop. looked like a huge motorcycle gang! turns out there were over 2000 riders riding for muscular dystrophy. how cool. we sat there for a good 15 minutes and headed in. we met sara in the parking lot. she wasn't hard to miss standing behind her element. we pulled next to her and started getting ready for the pre-ride. mike came in shortly after.
the guys were ready pretty early so they headed out without us. sara had a "quick" tire change and she, jill and i headed out as well. we took the ride pretty slow. i didn't know how i'd react to the climbing as the last two times i was at devils head i had an asthma attack, so i wasn't taking any chances. i have to admit for hating climbing i loved the course! i was a little awkward in the singletrack and even climbing as the front end seemed to wander, but i was okay with that as i knew it was the stem that i had recently changed. i brought the old one just in case.
we finished preriding and headed out to watch frank and jeremy ride the pro/semi-pro shorttrack. it was so fast. frank started pretty good and had a hell of a few laps. he dropped out just as hall and devine were coming up on him. man they were fast. way to start and hang in there frank. jeremy was still going strong. we entertained ourselves watching him from the sidelines as he usually rides a rigid singlespeed and he was on a suspended geared bike... so we'd watch him shift or not shift... we convinced ourselves he was confused all in good fun as it made it more fun to watch :).
we headed for the hotel room and food afterwards. it was a pretty early night. we had some minor bike work to do and we chatted a bit, but all were in bed by 10:30pm.
wake up was around 7:30 am. we headed down for a buffet breakfast. it was nice having something other than mcdonalds for a change. i love my sausage mcmuffin, but this was nice.
we headed back up to the hotel room to get the flock out. numerous trips were made by all and we were outta there. the van pulled in as we were getting out of the room. perfect timing i guess.
i was flippin' happy to hear our sleeveless jerseys would be arriving for dh. it was a brutally hot day with temps well into the 90s and the heat index over 100 degrees. i wrestled my spandex on and all my other goodies and headed out for a preride. i hung out in the shade on a road climb for a bit, came back for a little brake adjustment and headed to the start area.
i was called up first. it's nice being called up, however i am better off hanging in the 3rd or 4th row as i can never hang in the start. this i knew would be bad. i feel pressured to hang on with the real strong sport ladies. but today i just rode my own climb. i knew it was slow but at least i was riding. as i was climbing i thought of the sand turtle that was lost from orland park a few days ago... it had been missing for two weeks. i imagined how slow he must have gone but he got so far... i even thought that he was probably faster than me on that climb. i'm at the top of the climb now headed into the singletrack... i felt like i was in like 15th, when i really think about it, that's not bad. 15th out of almost 50. although that was just a guess. i knew I had the whole race to go. but it’s still frustrating to watch everyone pass you. i knew jill was right behind me. i could feel her. we were now in the singletrack. nice backup on the steep climb. a rider behind us apparently felt that she was going to win this on this particular climb. nope. wait with the rest of us, cuz if we coulda gone faster or around we would have. an opportunity to run up the side came and i took it. i must’ve passed 3 girls.
the temperature difference in the woods compared to the hill was amazing. it felt like 10 degrees! on the first lap coming out of the woods with the log crossings on the clim heading to the feedzone, i thought there is NO way i am going to be able to compete 3 laps. i grabbed a water. HOLY SHIT. it was soo cold I started to hyperventilate. i had to concentrate to get my breathing back to normal. sucked. i was tempted to just stop racing and sit in drink that cold water though…
but i moved on. I had no idea where i was in the race, who was ahead, who was behind… all i knew is the were dropping like flies.
the night before i had switched my stems. 100mm to 90mm. saved me. holy crap. i felt oh so comfortable in the singletrack again. Man, this race report is soo boring to write… long story short (i'll edit later if i remember anything important), my 2nd and 3rd laps i loved. i had a blast. i was actually passing people in the hidden rock singletrack… it felt good. i came into the finish in an hour and 40 minutes… just in time to give john a kiss and wish him luck as well as the others on the team. well, i didn't kiss them.
turns out i was 8th overall and 1st in age. sweet… jill was the surprise of the day with 2nd in age and 10th overall!!! way to go girl.
after wishing everyone luck i went to hose off and get changed and head up to the top of the hill.
as i was climbing i saw frank going up… next was kelsall followed by zach and john. later i saw sara come through essentially right behind kim and sara kj. she was flying. go sara.
jill and i headed down for awards which seemed to take forever. we ended up missing a bunch of the action… we saw everyone come in for the finish. sara was the winner for being the dirtiest of the whole bunch.