Abba Zabba you my only friend... and Ben Shockey

First off lucky for me I actually do have a few more friends than just Ben and a candy bar. I had the pleasure of seeing a lot of them today at CIRREM, a 62 mile gravel race. It was good to see all the Rassy guys, Oakley Rob, and Sedore among others. The folks can up too which was nice. Let's get to the meat and potatoes of this post though... race recap, it's what you came for. The weather was beautiful: probably mid 20s and not too windy (maybe low double digit wind speed). The turn out of excellent as well, 73 riders started and 57 finished. There was a good mix of cross and mtn. bikes, geared and singlespeed. I chose to ride the Eriksen geared 34x17. The race started off and the pace was furious from the onset. I tried hanging onto a group that had Jed Gammell and Kent Carlson who were also singlespeed, and some other guys... all on geared cross bikes. That appeared to be futile so I hung back and met up with a group that had Shockey and Kyle Sedore. We rode together for probably eight miles until the first real climb of the day. Ben and I rode off the front and no one came with us. He even asked if I thought that we actually could stay away from the group, and neither of us were convinced it was possible. Two guys, Mike from Cedar Falls, and Andrew from Ankeny, ended up catching back on and riding with us for a while. Once again I didn't really feel like I had legs under me until about two hours in, something I will have to work on for sure. Ben and I decided to just roll through the checkpoint at mile 34 and not get more water because we were both feeling good and had an extra bottle each. In hindsight refilling a bottle probably would have encouraged more drinking and wouldn't have changed the outcome of the race at all. The roads deteriorated as the day progressed changing from very firm to basically soup in the latter half. At about mile 40 I found myself screaming down a hill, snot flying from both nostrils, riding a patch of gravel maybe five inches wide, techno on the ipod and I looked down... 35.8 mph... I started laughing so hard. I couldn't help it, something about the whole situation just got me. I cramped up twice during the race, once at mile 44 and again at 56, but all in all a very successful ride... OH YEAH I got third in the SS class behind Jed and Kent, whoop whoop.

Race stats: 62.8 miles, 2705 ft of elevation gain, 6000 ish calories, 4 pop tarts, 1 bag of beef jerky nuggets, 1 bag of cliff-bloks, 46 oz of tea, 1 wreck that actually had the guy falling into my wheel and somehow not knocking me down, 3 dogs on the road. Post ride included: 4 beers...for free, 1 pork sandwich, 1 helping of chips, 1 helping of delicious baked beans with little smokeys in them, 2 slices of Pagliai's pizza, 1 20oz Mtn. Dew, 1 8 oz Redbull, 1 little bag of sport beans.

All in all a heck of a fun day. I am proud to finish behind guys like Kent and Jed who I really respect and have a lot of fun riding with. CIRREM has probably earned its spot on the annual race list.