There was a day when a 10 mile / 1 hour MTB ride was enough.

This is no longer the case.

The night before the race I was having cold sweats, I have no idea what was causing this, (the long 750mile drive just hours before, the weird catfish, coldslaw,corn,and the worst macaroni I ever tasted, from the Chevron gas station resteraunt, or maybe it was the Flu. Who knows?)

I wake up the morning of the race its 31 degree's outside "great weather for spandex"
Did I mention I left all my clothes except the ones, I'm wearing at home, Freeze was nice enough to let me borrow, his extra race bib shorts, top and, last years arm warmers. I cut a hole in the bottom of a cotton toiletry bag for a neck warmer and my mechanixs gloves top it off for ghetto hand protection.

So here it is 8am Feb,18th I'm starting the race its warmed up to 38 degrees the suns just peaking over the mountains, Tobins calling out the racers.

The shot goes out and we are off, the escorted lap across the highway was moving at a fast clip.

My line picks down the jeep road were not fairing me to well. I ended up hitting a pretty big hole and coming to a complete stop to crawl back out of. This allowed the whole pack that was following me to slip right by. More preriding would have paid off here.

Now I caught back up to the pack, I noticed that my front tire was sliding out a lot easier than my forward competitors, I had way to much pressure in it, I'm sure that the 32psi at 32degrees had turned in to 35 or more psi as the temp climbed into the upper 40s.

I knew there was a big hole coming up and even let my fellow competitors know about it just encase they didn't have the chance to preride the course, well one decide to pass and met the hole face first with a flip over his handle bars, that's racing for you. Who's gonna believe a guy wearing the set up I had on. The 30K split off sign is in the distance, I slightly reminisce the previous year going that way. Not this year, "I'll take the 50K's please". About 15K has past and only 2 slideouts and stop in hole has slowed me down "not happy about these mistakes" could have been worse though.

Now I'm traveling 2nd in a 5 person pack I accidentally hit the guys back tire on a steep climb when he came to a complete stop on a make able climb (he cussed I said my apology) the usual.

The climbs the sand the beautiful scenery make this place a race you'll never forget.

Let me just skip to the last climb on the second lap.

Terlingua took a piece of me this year. With the mountain in sight on the second climb I got off the bike to drain all fluids and consume what ever I had left in the bottle. The devil was waiting for me at the base of the mountain on the second lap asking for my soul in return for pain free passage up the climb.

I ignored him, this granted me a double shot of right hamstring cramps. I tried a couple of techniques to get rid of this soon to be debilitating body breakdown. I first slid back in the saddle this did not work. Then I got off the bike and was jogging with one stiff leg up the mountain this was better at first but then became worse. I re mounted on the bike and just began punching the back side of my leg with curved fist. I don't know why this worked but it did after about 15 hard as could punches they went away. Maybe I knocked some potassium and electrolyte's loose that were hanging out on the muscle walls.

I made it and the Mind against the Body war was finaly over.

I figure I was about middle of the pack, but come to find out a couple hours later I had scored a big W.

Here is my times for each Catagory Sport Expert, Overall Marathon and CX.