It was July 2007 – the eighth and final stage of the TransAlp Challenge, a race that started dismally for me, but our performance had steadily improved throughout the week. The course had about five miles (fine,8 kilometers- you probably cheer Corum replica watches in Italian at cross races too) of dirt road climbing before a lot of awesome technical singletrack descending, meaning a full on sprint to the singletrack was in the cards today. I typically loathe (and kind of blow at) this aspect of racing, but today was different.
Yeah sure, I felt like barfing up my heart, and my numb legs were appalled at the pace. But I kept sprinting, kept passing people, kept speeding up. After 7 days in a stage race, you get used to seeing the same faces, bikes, butts, whatever, yet here I was farther up in the race than I’d been, still chasing my “nurturing” partner who was replica watch gift somewhere up ahead. I fell victim to that “singletrack is just after this switchback” memory flaw that always forgets the worst of the climb. It didn’t matter though, as I kept digging, kept hurting, but kept going.
Singletrack appears on the right. Damn-yeah! I accelerate and pass a few more before bombing down the Euro rock garden and catching my partner on the descent. The race continues with out-of-my-head, pass-some-leader-jersey swiss replica watches climbing (super senior, I think), culminating in a truly exciting sprint finish... which we of course lost. Best finish in two year’s of TransAlp stages, and probably my best day ever on a mountain bike. “Who am I today?” I wonder. And then the inevitable swagger “Shit... I was fast.”So what happened there? Did I just wake up fast, never to have it happen again? Was there Epo in those Euro lagers I had last night?
