As most of you know, my trusty 26" Marin CXR decided to pass away during the weekend of Return on the Jedi. This left me two weeks to round up a new option for me to race on. The first was to see what could be done with the frame. Thankfully Marin stands behind their bikes and warrantied my frame with a little bit of an extra special touch. They set me up with a new 29" frame. This was great, but it did create a bit of a scramble as I would now need new wheels and a fork. With some quick calls to Patrin, our fantastic Easton rep, Eric from Trinity Bikes had me lined up with an awesome new set of the Easton EA70 XCT wheels. Next on the list was a fork. With my new frame, the fork would need a tapered headtube and I desired a 15MM Thru-Axle (nerdy bike speak for things that just mean a stiffer/sturdier front end). This proved to be a dilemma as all the vendors were out of stock until the end of June. That wouldn't work with the race being less than two weeks away! I put in a call with Moses, who is our rep for SRAM, to see if he might have any ideas. I got back an answer that put yet another big smile on my face - he had exactly what I needed in his inventory!! He immediately got the fork on it's way to the shop. Suddenly I was sitting in a very comfortable position for parts, but unfortunately, due to some snafus, this wouldn't last! With the new beefy axle, I needed a conversion kit for the wheels to work. This small, yet crucial part was backordered until the week after the race, so a hunt ensued to find the parts. Patrin was able to locate the part and our good friend Jesse Huntington happened to be the mechanic who had the part. Since I was at work, Bob took the wheel down to Jesse who was able to convert the wheel effortlessly on Friday. To put this in perspective, the race was the next day, Saturday, at 10:00 AM in Corvallis. The next little issue came with the frame due to some mis-communication. It was initially scheduled to arrive Thursday, which heart stoppingly turned into Friday evening. I was so relieved when I got a call from Greg at the shop to let me know that my frame had indeed shown up! This pushed me over the ecstatic edge. I had gone from not having a bike early on Friday morning to suddenly having everything to put together an EPIC bike for my race the next day.
So with everything available, it was time to build, but wait! We had tickets to the Bend Bicycle Film Festival that needed to be used! We all rolled down to Bend to watch some cool videos, including one called Particles which starred our very own Austin Line! After the show, we had to fuel up to build the bike, so Sam, Bob and I stopped at Rigoberto's for some delicious Mexican food!
Once we got home it was build time! Bob and I worked in the close quarters of our living room as we finished dis-assembly of my old bike and built up the new one! This process started around 11:30 PM until it was completely finished around 2:30 AM! I took the bike out for a quick spin in the neighborhood and then crawled into bed dreading the alarm that would be going off in 2.5 hours.....UGH.
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| The new bike, all built up and ready to race!! |
When the alarm went off, we dragged ourselves out of bed in a sleep deprived coma and loaded everything up. Sam was super kind and said that she would drive over to the valley so I could attempt to get a bit more shut eye. This actually did work as I was able to probably accumulate approximately an hour of sleep over the 2.5 hour drive to the valley. With the extra bit of sleep, I was surprised to find myself not feeling too bad, and got everything ready for the race.
I kept warm-up to a minimum as I figured I'd have 4-5 hours on the bike to get the legs ready! All the racers gathered at the Blodgett School for our pre-race instructions from the MTB race promoter king, Mike Ripley. The instructions were simple - watch the course markings, there are two feed zones per lap, etc. Afterwards, the gun went off and it was time to race! I settled into a solid, but not too hard pace as we began the first of two 25 mile laps. I was a bit nervous with the brand new bike underneath me, but thankfully everything rode perfectly for the entire 50 miles, aside from a little bit of air burping out of the freshly mounted/sealed tires during one of the descents. After a grueling 47 or so miles, I saw a racer who had put some space on me during one of the longer climbs on lap 2. I caught glimpse of him through the trees as we came upon Panama Canal, one of the most fun downhill trail sections of the race. This had me all kinds of giddy as I knew I would be able to nail that section and close the gap, which I did rather quickly!
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| Tracking my prey on Panama Canal. |
As I sat on his wheel for the last little bit of trail, I planned my attack for the long mile or so stretch of gravel road time trialing. As we blasted out of the singletrack, I put my head down, feeling confident that my legs could power me to the finish while passing the other guy. Unfortunately, he had planned for the same, but had a little more gas in his legs than I. He pulled away ever so slowly, but I kept my head down in the hopes that maybe he pushed a bit too hard, but he played his cards perfectly, holding me off, finishing 13 seconds in front of me. Yes, 13 seconds after 4 hours and 40 minutes of racing. Arghhh!! So close! I was still super happy though, being able to finish 4th behind such a solid racer, on 3-4 hours of sleep, is ok in my book!
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| Nice vista along Hwy 20. |
After an eventful day, which also involved celebrating my birthday, it was time to head back home to the high country, proud of a successful crusade to the Willamette Valley for the Trinity Bikes Cycling Team!
-Shane Johnson
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