Chequama - "Gone"

(photos courtesy of skinnyski.com -thank you)

I've got a couple of posts to catch up with, so they're going to be brief. The Chequamy was a dissapointment for the second year in a row. It started out well. As you can see above, I was in about 13th place at Rosie's field. I was sitting in the top 20 or so through about mile 15. Then everything began coming unglued. My legs and lungs began revolting. I fell off the group I was riding with. Another group caught me containing the oftedahl bros, Ben Moore, etc. I hung on for a while, but eventually lost my mental focus and once again fell off that group as well.

I got going again and started feeling better. I was riding in a group of about 8 to 10. I found myself in front taking long pulls most of the time. The guy below with the goofy knee high socks would trade off with me. We started catching a bunch of dropped riders and dropped the group we were with.

Just after the Seeley Water Tower climb, I noticed my chain was skipping on the middle ring. I tried shifting up to the big cookie to find myself with "chain-suck." I got off and looked at the cranks to see if one of the rings was bent only to find that I had 1 out of 4 chainring bolts remaining. That's right 3 of my chainring bolts, holding the middle and large chainring onto the crank arms, had fallen off. I basically had the granny gear for the last 8 or so miles of the race. I was spinning out trying to hang onto my mediocre position. I finished the race feeling like crap and pretty dissapointed about my performace. I believe I finished 51st overall. I was hoping for top 20. Next year. Creepyfriendly and Marko are animals. Paul H had a respectable performance.