Guilty... and Chequamegon narritive.

Indeed i was almost guilty of the "haven't posted in an month" offense, but just like every good bike racer, i have my excuses ALL LINED UP!
see my posts referring to the dirty chickens held over the first few weeks of september leading up to the Fat Tire Festival.
Fat Tire weekend is always a highlight of the year. It was the 2nd Annual Lenny Parisi Northwoods Open, it was a beautiful day and well attended. Many beers were drank in honor of Lenny, and a good time was had by all.
This year we had 2 Texas Cadillac's in the caravan to the Northwoods. Gatto had the big black Chevy, with Tawse, Bos, Gatto, picked up a Balmer en route.
The SS Valdeez was my big white Ford, with Smooooott, Ritzler, MTB matt, picking up a Dixon en route at Balmers place. Feltz and JP were rocking out the Volvo, and met us up north. The walkie talkie came in handy for some great heckling, and police alerts.
The race was a good one this year for me. It was a warm morning, so there was not much need for extra planning of layers to be removed. I started with armwarmers, and had them rolled down by mile 6. Of course the SRAM crew got rocking early, and i learned from last year to keep my pace on the road roll out, and start picking off people after Rosie's field has settled the nerves and increased the HR. It misted off and on during my ride, the course was wet, but near as muddy as i had thought it would have been. The new wheels i got from Alberto's Sport were handling the conditions excellently, and the suspension tuning from SRAM was spot on for me.
I was eating and drinking on schedule to avoid getting to the last 10 miles with nothing in the tank. I latched onto every wheel i could get on the fire roads, and found one guy with about 6 to go that pulled me along nicely until we got to about 3 to go and i decided i was close enough to gamble on an effort. I finished up the ride in 3:27, taking about 20 minutes off my time from last year. Just as i was finishing, it started to lightly rain, which turned into a downpour after i got out of the shower and cleaned up. Unfortunately we loaded our gear in the rain, and started our journey home back to the Chicago Suburbs. Thanx again to SRAM for hooking me up with a sweet place to crash, not more than 300m from the finish line. I love hanging out with the SRAM crew on Fat Tire Weekend, always good for some laughs!!