Les Miserables

my condolences to victor hugo's title of his epic tale of boredom (translated to a musical nonetheless), but, in my novella (pronounced nohv-HELLA!), it's not about jean valjean and his redemptive travails in frog-ville. it's about a five foot seven filipino fighting a head cold doing an 18 hour event on an 8-man team in fruita, co during may thunderstorms. weather-dependent events can easily turn south as soon as the weather does likewise. i was hoping for the 60 percent chance that it wouldn't t-storm. it turned out to be 100 percent shizzlely.
on the way out of town, it's snowing cats and dogs by floyd hill all the way until we hit the vail valley. once we hit palisades, it's a torrential downpour. can't see a thing. at the campsite in fruita, kenny and tracey set up their tent at night during the rain. i bring no shelter because i crash in my toyota truck. we learn the batting order that evening and it's: kenny, tophe, marty, scott, locke, me, matt, and erin. it's an all level team. in order of descending skill level (most experienced first) it would be: kenny, me, tophe, locke, erin, matt, scott, and marty. **addendum to post since locke's being a crybaby** okay the new and improved skill level list (click here for official results) has tophe sandwiched between erin and matt (per official lap times); and, if i may add (which i will thank-you): erin (as well as locke) rocks the bike. our team name's the slow spokes not the pedal-files as matt creatively petitioned for.
at midnight kenny's flying to the staging area after setting up tent and his lighting system on his bike. when the gun goes off, kenny explodes off the line, road bike style and is third before the singletrack logjam. nutty. you see all the lights just stop to queue up the singletrack and i see kenny in third firing up the hill. incidentally there's this nonstop drizzle with a stiff wind so it's chilling to the bone. the excitement of this event fails to cancel out the physiological affects of the shitty weather compounded with my head cold my body's trying kick. kenny's going to complete the first three laps in record time. for a guy who skies in the off-season with no cycling, he scorches the lap times. so i sleep 'til my number's called...
when i get up i hear from tophe, who's bike is caked in the nasty fruita mud/sackrete mixture, that the mud's so bad that not only does it accumulate on the bottom bracket clusters to impede rear tire rotation but it also gums up on the fork braces and sliders and rear derailleurs. this causes front brake cables to snap and r. derailleurs to break. the mud is sooo heavy too that people can't even portage their bikes due to the weight. at this point, locke says bump dis and continues to sleep until it's safe to start riding again.
once a rider does his/her laps, it's like a relay. the rider on-course disembarks at the staging area, and the awaiting rider takes off like a shot once his teammate's off the course and the officials are watching. the weather's gray, cold, and not raining when i see locke finish his second lap. i go, and i'm cranking. i try to put it in the big ring whenever possible. there's some standing water. all over the course there's these micro cells of weather that unpredictably dump rain unbeknownst to the rider. so i fire off the first lap sub-30 minutes, at 6 miles/lap. second lap, a micro cell of cloudburst musta happened because everything's drenched and the dirt/clay mixture's like riding on a skating rink. the first third has an off-cambered singletrack, that if you fell downhill, would send you into the reservoir/lake. so i do my flying wallenda impersonation with my inside leg acting as an outrigger to survive this portion of the singlecrack. on the flats the mud's accumulating quicker than my credit card's apr. needless to say, i witness firsthand what tof's talking about. at this point i'm pisssssed! i was so expecting sunny skies and sunscreen; not mud, hellish windchill and a potential mechanical from the accumulation of mud on critical components. i was scheduled to do lap three, but i bailed because i just could not go forward and went to our tent site to tell matt he was up. i then hose off my bike so i can complete the latter portions of the day. note to self: singlespeed rider were cooking due to the simplicity of the ss design. so kenny volunteered his ss to me for my next up. i fire off one of my best times (including multispeed) on kenny's rig. again, though, a micro cell downpours on a portion of the course i'm not on. when i do lap two it's a repeat of my first session. first lap smokin', second lap portaging the bike on the uphills because it's mud-o-rama on me and the singlespeed. incidentally the mud accumulated so fast it ehfed up the chain tensioner so the chain was just skimming off the top of the cog whenever i applied my pistonic motion on the pedals. frustrating and again, completely anticlimactic and depressing. we're three laps down from third, so as the time clicks off the final minutes, it's matt, kenny and me anchoring, sneaking in some precious lap times, before the gun before the gun goes off signaling finito. kenny sets the team record for hot lap w/ a 27:38, he pulls off after lap two, then i go off, bell lap, like a meth user seeing a can of dran-o. i pull a 28:10. almost a hot lap. we finish 5th out of ten teams. still, 3 laps down from third. oh well. now i'm sleep deprived and kenny, tracey, and i commiserate on what a bummer of an event this was all due to inclimate weather. company was great (locke, erin, matt, marty and tophe)! weather was not. met some cool people who are thinking about doing the 24hours of e-rock (elephant rock)-a mostly roadie course. i'm not in. gotsta think about doing the road bike thing now.