I’ll begin by thanking Jason for all his hard work running the race and preparing the course. Course was in great shape, but it was alive and required constant attention. We are all used to seeing Jason on the course during the races encouraging riders, but this time we saw him with the drill fixing the bridges, with the shovel clearing the mud pits or filling the ruts. In addition, Jason also ensured the beautiful weather for the race day – I’m sure it was due to his efforts too. Thanks man, it’s always a great pleasure racing the events you run!

Despite great weather and great course race didn’t start very well for me. I’ll save your time and will not include long list of standard cyclist excuses on why race didn’t go as planned. Let’s just say it was ups and downs for me. Laps 1 through 3 were… pretty bad. Laps 4 and 5 were pretty good – best day laps. On lap 6 things started heading south quickly and on lap 7 I found myself barely moving. I noticed that in conversations with fellow racers I started whining about how tired I was and how cold it was getting and how muddy some spots were. Then there was some incoherent blabbing in place of thanks to encouragements. I couldn’t hold line on the singletracks and Tunnel of Love was not fun at all. And all that even before the sun started to set. At that point I decided to call it quits.

I rolled into pit after 7 laps and with 4 hours ’till the race end and told everyone that it was it. Well, that’s were I hit a little snag. It was easy to tell myself that I quit, but it was impossible to convince fellow Troupers. Everyone started encouraging me to keep going – I was told that I was in 2nd and I had to continue riding, there were many “you can do it”, “just keep moving”, “you have 4 hours to do 2 laps”, “just one more”, “you’re riding very strong”. So since I was unable to find motivation myself, my friends did it for me. I started preparing for one more lap – night lap. That’s when Jeff rolled in and said “we’ll ride next lap together”. It didn’t even sound like an offer, he simply state the fact, like it already happened. I should mention that Jeff was racing Expert 40+ and was in 1st with a decent lead, but with 4 hours to go he needed to be moving. I tried to convince him that he should be defending his 1st, that I will be slowing him down, but Jeff wouldn’t have any of that. We were riding together.

I quickly fueled myself with a can of soda and headed out trying to hang on to Jeff’s wheel. To my surprise it was not that difficult – while I was definitely slowing him down, we were moving at a decent pace, even passing some people. I rode all the uphills, and when the first downhill came I was having fun again! In one canyon – always the same canyon – the cramps hit a bit but I tried to spin them out and just keep moving not to loose sight of Jeff’s back. Moving and screaming in pain (if you heard somebody swearing loudly in Russian, it was me). Either spinning or swearing helped with the cramps. Tunnel of Love at night – it was so much fun! It was by far my best lap of the race. We finished my lap 8 in just over an hour, quickly refueled (one more can of soda) and headed out for another lap. Although a bit slower, it was yet another great lap.
Jeff held on to his 1st in expert 40+ and I got 2nd in men sport solo with 9 laps. But my podium spot truly belongs to the entire team. I lost my mental battle on lap 7, but the team won it for me. Thank you my good friends. GO TROUPE!!!