The Whisky 50 Marathon lived up to its name yesterday as I could’ve used about 50 shots of whisky to get my mind off the race once crossing the finishing line. That and a box full of band aids. The race started out pretty tame as a group of 40 of us stayed togethar going up the first 20 min climb to the singletrack. After self imploding in the crit two nights before I made sure to have a conservative start. This seemed to work great as riders were popping off one by one and pretty soon I found myself in the top 10 feeling like things were just getting warmed up.
Riding on the wheel of my team mate Barry Wicks with the leaders in sight the race was shaping up pretty nicely. This all soon went to the compost bin on a long 12 min decent. It was a sketchy decent on off-camber singletrack with cacti and large boulders lining the course. Half way down I was thinking, “Danm, it would hurt alot to fall around here.” 1 minute later as I cruised down a fast open section a baseball sized rock shot off my front tire and put a hole in my shin. This temporarily stunned me and the next thing I knew the handlebars were sideways and I was making like the rocket man, minus a rocket pack. A rocket pack would’ve been key in this situation but I didn’t have one and instead had just enough time to think “shit”, as I landed, doing a perfect belly flop, bouncing off jagged rocks and rolling into the desert terrain. I’m pretty sure doing a belly flop off a 10 ft dock into a frozen lake would’ve felt better. Given the virtue of the fall and the speed I was going I figured for sure there as going to be some solid carnage. After a couple minutes catching my wind I started to acces the damage, 1 bloody/numb hand, 1 chest feeling like it was dented inwards, 1 knee/leg covered in blood, 2 scraped up arms and 1 good road rash on the shoulder. The next few minutes were spent riding/stumbling down to the base of the decent were I was lucky enough to be met up with the search and rescue crew.
After riding on a broken thumb for 3 days earlier this winter before I found out is was broken and needing to get pins put in it, I figured I better get things checked out before continuing on the ride. 15 minutes later the trail side check up was done, I had a couple fresh bandages and then I carried on for a nice cruise to the finish line. Pretty sure I finished second to last. Slightly out of the prize money and the top 10 but I was pretty stoked to still be able to ride my bike and to have a chance to cruise for 4 hrs in the sun.
The other Kona boys (Kris and Barry) had ok rides coming in 13th and 14th. Overall the race weekend was alot of fun and all of us at Kona are hoping we get the chance to come back down here next yr for round 2 so we can get our redemption.
Barry and Kris just headed out to Phoenix to catch there flights back home, I will be staying around Prescott till tommorow afternoon to check out a bit more of the great riding around here and take advantage of the sun!
Huge thanks to our mechanic Dave Mcnaughton for looking after the logistics and keeping our bikes running great all weekend!
Off to work on darkening the skin….