Three or four things or so

Hmmm...

Did someone order a well-beaten dead horse?

*epilogue enters the chat*

"Winning" wasn't as fun as it looked.  It's been years since I was in the hunt at a stage race, and I'm a whole 'nother animal now.  Where I used to descend with somewhat reckless abandon and sheer joy, all I could think about this year was how many times I'd let 'er rip here in the past and ended up with a flat.  I've done so at least four times in thirteen attempts, with one finish on a flat for a stage win and one flat on the last day that bumped me from second to third.  Not only was riding on the brakes reducing the size of my smile, I was looking over my shoulder constantly for the first three days.  I didn't open up a comfortable gap (like enough time to deal with a non-hassle free flat) until I started stage four, and I think I can only attribute that to Colin being even more poorly dressed than myself for the cold rainy conditions on stage three and losing energy just trying to keep warm.

That said...

My legs never felt bad... like "mountain bike stage race bad."  I did some things right.

I squoze my legs.  A lot.  In the morning, post-stage, and at night before bed.  I drank something for recovery and ate massive amounts of Pringles within an hour of every finish.  Not only was I drinking Rocket Red before every stage, I'd been loading with the cheat juice since the week before PMBAR (daily for a month straight).  I took a nap every single day, except when I found my woobly crunk that required attention.  The Upper Eagle bunks were basically empty, except for Jeff and I, so it was easy to take some "me time" and not get caught up in all the "what are you doing right now," 'how did your day go," or "you need some help with that (insert broken bike part here)?"

Relatively speaking, I still had what people call "a good time."  Certainly looking forward to being a "washed-up, has-been" pack fodder single speeder at Breck Epic in two months.

Thankfully, I'm not burned out, and I'm looking forward to Mountain Cat 100 (108?) this Saturday.  It's sure to be a long, grueling day riding around Richmond on trails, roads, and hobo paths with Watts on what we used to call "mountain bikes" back in the day, but it certainly is one of the best of days.

My mandatory Mountain Cat 100 Valentine card to complete the registration process.  It's that kinda event.

I could/should mention that last weekend, I did the Cutty Cap Challenge: Charlotte Chapter.

I woke up early with the intention of just getting out as soon as the cap locations dropped at 8:00am, try to snag one that might be close to my house, and then ride to some other locations hoping to bump into someone fun and have a limited adventure and mebbe a beer?  I ended up having some strange thing going on the with my Ride With GPS app (olds and tech don't mix), letting it frustrate me for forty five minutes, just leaving the house on my bike because I was dressed and bored, deleting the app, and reloading it...

And then all the locations lit up.  

Dammit.

I went to the closest one to my house less than a mile away.  The cap was gone.  I decided I might as well follow through with my plan of hopefully meeting up with random frands along the way and plotted a route for a couple more stops... and after one more, the RWGPS message alerts started coming through my headphones.

I don't know that's what I'm hearing because I'd never heard them before.

I ignored them at first until I ran into someone at another location where the cap had already been snagged.  He said something about "how about all those side missions... and some are down at the state line?"

WTF.

I looked at all the side missions that had dropped.  What had been eight (or ten) cap locations was now close to twenty two cap locations and missions... and some of the side missions were really close to where I'd already been.  Argh.

It was at that point that I texted The Pie and said I'd be out a lot longer than expected.  I decided that despite my hour late start and zero chance at a cap (or probably running into a frand), I was going after all of them... for... "reasons."

And stupidly, riding hard from mission to mission fueled by anger at my own technological stupidity coming between me and my original plan.

I ended up with all the checkpoints at the South Carolina state line at mile 43 with a 10 miles ride back home to go. 

Pulled out my phone, and now with time to "explore" the challenge and other aspects of the game...

Hey, a leaderboard.  Who knew?  I'm on top.  For now.  Neat.

Hey, messages.  They were keeping track of my progress and my fuddling through the process of loading bonus photos.  To say I struggled with this part is an understatement.

Hey... it says there are still two side missions I missed... to include one I'd already done at mile 14?

Mmmmm.  Head back out to grab an image of a mural and back north to the Seigle Ave skyline location.  Again.  Ten "bonus" miles.  End up back at home with 64 miles.

Sitting on the couch and squeezing my legs and checking the leaderboard to see if anyone is moving up...

And now my mural mission points are gone.  Dammit.  Guess they didn't consider the pinup girl on the wall of Brawley's to be a true "local mural."

Get outta the squeezy bags, jump back on the bike, ride another five miles to snag not one but two murals.

I guess I won Charlotte?

Dunno.  Didn't hear anything as of yet.  I found out I had two accounts, one on the app I was using and one when I'm in a broswer.  There was also a global competition that was HUGE, so I'm doubting my late attack from the back will be prosperous there.  All my pestering Ride With GPS at least halped me sort out my issues some issues, so mebbe we know a winner before the end of the week.

Anyhoo, it was a fun distraction from reality, and I got a butt-load of unwanted but needed exercise and mebbe I do better next year because mebbe I less dum.

Now that I'm used to pointlessly riding all over a city, I gotta be ready for Mountain Cat.