First ever race report

Wow...who would've thought that the roadie fag wouldn't be the first one to post about some lame race he did. Anyway, this past saturday I went up to the Michaux State Forest in PA to race in the Curse of Dark Hollow XC. Michaux is sweet, but really rocky and technical...I tried to convince Andy to go but the thought of riding all that techy gnar made him wet himself and hide in his room until I left.

The weekend started off great with a ridiculous amount of carbo-loading...Saturday night, I cooked mass quantities of spicy hashbrowns, sausage and biscuits, and topped it all off with 3/4 a box of cereal and about a half gallon of oj. Andy witnessed this gastric spectacle and was appalled, estimating my calorie intake at that meal to be in the 3000 range. It takes a lot to fuel this 130 pounds of fury for 3 hours. In an ironic twist, the erstwhile James McHone U25 Roadie Fag Development Team uniform made its race debut on my shoulders this weekend, stricken with the inability of the roadie fags to muster a race team and driven by the necessity to provide James with pictures so he doesn't evict us, I was given a free kit and orders to play in the dirt.

After an ass-early car ride to the venue, I met up with fellow Harrisonburg dirt junkies Kirby, Ryan F., Thomas and Dylan. I started strong in the sport class, despite massive chainsuck on the line, and joined in a sketchy paceline with Ryan and Kirby down the first rocky singletrack downhill of the race, I hung on to the leader for quite a while until going through a slow, twisty section, I had a total psychological bonk. This cat I was riding with asked if I had ever ridden at Gambril in MD, and I responded "yes", intending to finish "that's where i broke my collarbone", but before I could interject, he concluded "the rest of this course is exactly like it!"
Uh-oh...I experienced total confidence meltdown and rode like a small child for much of the next hour, losing contact with the leaders as I desperately avoided another fractured clavicle.

Fortunately, the last part of the course had lots of fireroad climbing in which I made up some time and rediscovered my balls before hitting the final segments of single track. I finished up a lucky 13th...pretty good for riding so deep in the slums I couldn't see out.

Post race, Thomas and I held a publicity photo shoot for the McHone squad, pictures to be posted soon.

Oh and Andy has some stupid race called tuna or something coming up. I was going to do it, but I heard most of the roads are paved, what's up with that?

<3,
Ryan