Ganaraska Gear Grinder

My lovely 3rd place prize

It has been quite the interesting race weekend. Starting things off on the wrong foot, my girlfriend, of a year decided, to go her own way without me the night before the race . This sucks considering I love her and she has my laptop. Needless to say I felt a little bewildered and as a result missed both my dinner and breakfast leading up to the the Ganaraska Gear Grinder. This shouldn't be a worry though; after all it was only a measly 50 km of off-road action.

Come morning I felt good and was nicely under the delusion that previous evenings news hadn't affected me. That came to an abrupt halt when the first frickin' words out of my buddy's mouth were "you look down, everything okay?" Shit, am I that fucking transparent? Man, I suck.

Once we got to the race, I lulled about and got as unprepared for the race as I possibly could. I found the one gel pack I had fortuitously remembered to bring along (my breakfast). I had a hell of a time finding shorts- is nakedness allowed? Then I made the brilliant discovery that I didn't bring my camelbak water bladder. Solution? I stuck a water bottle in it the camelbak. Lastly, to round it all off the whole thing in proper fashion I didn't bother warming up prior to the event.

I sat on the line, stomach grumbling, formulating my game plan; take it easy and finish the race. Of course I didn't stick to it for one second. Off the start I got annoyed at riding with people, so I hammered the first climb to get away. Then the few people I ran into afterwards couldn't stand having a singlespeed pass, and jammed past me on every piece of flat land. Although fun passing back, I quickly grew tired of this and I spun like a freak to get away. 32x18 gearing? Not a smart choice on this predominately flat course.

Once I got into my own space the rest of the race was really uneventful until I hit the 45 km mark (15 km remaining). I think the lack of food earlier started to catch up. I felt like a kitten in a river, but I was still riding. I was riding head on into a fat old brick wall.
The real mettle of singlespeeding, is when you are fatigued. When you start to weaken there is nowhere to hide. You can't drop a couple gears and spin home. You can't walk, because that admits defeat. Nope, when you reach this point there is only one solution; balls to the wall. I could no longer make out the shape of the ground on climbs, but this is okay because I am still pushing the gear on the climbs

By the grace of some higher power I persevered and limped across the finish line. I could barely walk (I wanted to collapse). All I could do was sit and eat about 15 of the free freezies in a row. Sugar is my saviour.

Once I was able to form sentences again I decided to wait around. For some odd reason I wanted to see my result. When they were finally posted, some time warp science oddity must have occurred because I got third in the 20-29 class. How did that work? I still have no idea.

I won't lie to you and tell you that my strong mental fortitude pulled me through this tough period, thank you to for believing in me. No I ain't dishing out any of that crap. Honestly, I still have not clue in Hell. I don't think my class was all that strong this race (there was a Canada cup over in Quebec that day). I guess that is just racing for ya.

The only thing I know for sure is that I am glad I did it on a singlespeed!