A few weekends ago, I rode the Talon Trails Excruciation Exam. I'm just now finding the energy to write about it. Sorry about that. The race was an 85 mile trail/road/dirt road odyssey through the beginnings of the TX hill country. Raine(the Wife) and I drove over to Bluff Creek Ranch, Warda, TX, the night before the race and set up camp. To bed we went, and I had trouble sleeping knowing what was staring me in the face the coming morning.
We were up before sunrise, getting registered was the first priority. With that taken care of(not without a hang-up or two) I hustled back to camp to get ready. Put the bike together, air in the tires, get food and drink together for the ride, get my jersey pockets filled up, Raine's cooking me breakfast, and before I know it and before I'm ready they're calling for the pre-race meeting. I hustled up to finish, ran to the meeting, and threw some food down as fast as I could, but not enough I know. The meeting was over, and we headed over to the start area.
I had no intentions or illusions of making this a race, I was just there for the miles. The start was Le Mans style, maybe 40 yards to a tree and then around it and back to the bike. I jogged pretty slowly, wanting to make sure that everyone who would be riding seriously would be in front of me. On the first Warda lap I rode with a few other friends for a bit, then passed up to Shaun Taylor. I finished the lap with him and then hit the road. I took it pretty slow on the road, as I was gonna wait on team Acci-Dent to catch up. A couple of friends I worked with on the South TX Death Ride last year caught up and I pacelined with them for a while, then decided to hang back and wait some more. Hit the first checkpoint where Raine was volunteering, and boy it would have been easy to quit there. I was soaking wet from riding through thick fog for an hour and a half, she was there with the truck, dry clothes, and my dog. But I kept going on down the road. I got to Rocky Hill and Dent still hadn't caught up so I decided to go on out to keep moving. The lap at Rocky Hill was neat, I'd never ridden some of that back stuff, it was pretty cool. Then of course we had to ride Y-kNot, all I could think was "why, why, why?" Back to the bottom and I headed out on the road back to Warda. I left with another rider who had dropped me pretty good on the road from BCR to RHR, but I had caught and passed him towards the end of RHR and put a few minutes on him before the end of the trail. He was in my class, and it was at this point that I started thinking, hey, I could at least beat somebody. We chit-chatted out on the road a good bit, I figured out he was a roadie and could probably drop me if he wanted on the road. But I also knew judging by the way I passed him at RHR if we got back to BCR together I could take him. We got to the last checkpoint where Raine was waiting on me again and she told me that Dent's bike had exploded on him before he even finished the first lap at BCR. So off we went to BCR, and the other rider never tried anything. He let me go into the singletrack first, and I wasn't really feeling like trying anything either. I just held a steady pace, but it turned out I dropped him pretty quickly. Once I figured out he was gone, I ramped it up a bit to make sure he stayed back there. I wound up putting five minutes on him in that three mile section.
We were up before sunrise, getting registered was the first priority. With that taken care of(not without a hang-up or two) I hustled back to camp to get ready. Put the bike together, air in the tires, get food and drink together for the ride, get my jersey pockets filled up, Raine's cooking me breakfast, and before I know it and before I'm ready they're calling for the pre-race meeting. I hustled up to finish, ran to the meeting, and threw some food down as fast as I could, but not enough I know. The meeting was over, and we headed over to the start area.
I had no intentions or illusions of making this a race, I was just there for the miles. The start was Le Mans style, maybe 40 yards to a tree and then around it and back to the bike. I jogged pretty slowly, wanting to make sure that everyone who would be riding seriously would be in front of me. On the first Warda lap I rode with a few other friends for a bit, then passed up to Shaun Taylor. I finished the lap with him and then hit the road. I took it pretty slow on the road, as I was gonna wait on team Acci-Dent to catch up. A couple of friends I worked with on the South TX Death Ride last year caught up and I pacelined with them for a while, then decided to hang back and wait some more. Hit the first checkpoint where Raine was volunteering, and boy it would have been easy to quit there. I was soaking wet from riding through thick fog for an hour and a half, she was there with the truck, dry clothes, and my dog. But I kept going on down the road. I got to Rocky Hill and Dent still hadn't caught up so I decided to go on out to keep moving. The lap at Rocky Hill was neat, I'd never ridden some of that back stuff, it was pretty cool. Then of course we had to ride Y-kNot, all I could think was "why, why, why?" Back to the bottom and I headed out on the road back to Warda. I left with another rider who had dropped me pretty good on the road from BCR to RHR, but I had caught and passed him towards the end of RHR and put a few minutes on him before the end of the trail. He was in my class, and it was at this point that I started thinking, hey, I could at least beat somebody. We chit-chatted out on the road a good bit, I figured out he was a roadie and could probably drop me if he wanted on the road. But I also knew judging by the way I passed him at RHR if we got back to BCR together I could take him. We got to the last checkpoint where Raine was waiting on me again and she told me that Dent's bike had exploded on him before he even finished the first lap at BCR. So off we went to BCR, and the other rider never tried anything. He let me go into the singletrack first, and I wasn't really feeling like trying anything either. I just held a steady pace, but it turned out I dropped him pretty quickly. Once I figured out he was gone, I ramped it up a bit to make sure he stayed back there. I wound up putting five minutes on him in that three mile section.
I finished in 7:11, probably could have been a fair bit faster if I hadn't spent so much time waiting for Dent to catch up. But the time didn't matter to me really, I enjoyed the all day ride. On the way back to BCR, my arms were just totally toast. I could barely sit normal on the bike. Once I hit the singletrack back at BCR, every bump I hit felt like the fork was locked out. My wrist was the worst, still very, very tender for a couple days. That washboard road really did a number on it. Thank goodness I had the bigwheels to smooth it out some. 
So that caps off my third mt. bike endurance event: Ouachita Challenge '06, South Texas Death Ride '07, and Excruciation Exam '08. They're all miserable, long, and challenging; but in the end extremely satisfying.
So that caps off my third mt. bike endurance event: Ouachita Challenge '06, South Texas Death Ride '07, and Excruciation Exam '08. They're all miserable, long, and challenging; but in the end extremely satisfying.
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