11/4 NECCS #3 Chainbiter 8.0 @ Farmington, CT

Elite Masters 35+
33rd/89

This is a long overdue post, but I’m catching up as the season had drawn to a close.
After spending the night in Boston to help break up the long drive from Maine, I zipped down to CT for this race on a nice, sunny, albeit chilly day. The hope was again to crack the top-15 and register some points for the series. With 2 out of 7 races already complete, I needed to git ‘er done. The course was laid out in a park with sports fields so there were open-grassy sections as well as some rides in the woods. It was a fun and fast.
During my warm-up, I tried a maneuver many riders pull off: I rode the course with my extra wheelset I would be leaving in the pit area so as to keep the race set fresh and clean. All went well and I finished my warmup on the trainer with the race wheelset and was ready to go. As I was reinstalling the race wheelset, I told myself to be sure the skewers are tight as I had an instance once when they weren’t screwed in as they apparently should have been and after a hard pedal push, the rear wheel moved in the droputs and began rubbing the frame. Well, I again thought I cinched them down well enough and proceeded to the start line. I’d also like to mention I had to deal with a small crisis at the rink where my employee thought there was an ammonia leak. This was not helping me focus on the task at hand, however I had no one to blame but myself for not communicating better with the folks at school prior to my leaving for the weekend.
Anyway, the gun goes off and we tear up a paved incline and head towards the first section of woods. Guess what happened? The torque from my mashing the pedals to apply power to the rear wheel was greater than the torque I used to tighten the wheel and it loosened and was rubbing the frame. the friction was so great that I started burning the tire and it was slowing my down considerably. So, I had to pull off to the side not even 200 yards into the race and realign the wheel and tighten the skewer. By the time I finished, the entire field had passed my by and I was starting DFL (dead last)! I got going and immediately the quitter voice was saying to bag it because there was no hope from here, but I didn’t listen. It was a nice day, I drove all the way down, and I had nothing to lose. So I continued on and rode my typical race without concern for placing picking off guys 1 by 1. It was actually a great motivating factor constantly reeling guys in and passing them. I have to say I truly enjoyed the race. Although I missed my mark of top-15, I was satisfied in the fact that I passed 56 guys and felt good doing it.
This finish meant that the next day’s race was do or die for the series.