DNF

Pretty much rode the couch all wk, ate a lot of chocolate covered pretzels, drank beer, did some efforts, but not too many. Wasn't sure if Sunday's race would be brilliant or terrible.

Saturday, chore-day, eventually head into the basement to poke about the bike for Sunday's Root66 race. I've heard you can use regular tires on UST rims w/Stans, never tried it, tomorrow's "c" race seems like a good time to experiment. Nokian tires are listed first on the Stans website and think, "i've got that set of NBX Lites i've never used from 2003..." Unmount the kick-ass UST Hutchinson Piranhas and begin the tedious process of mounting-up a set of non-UST tires to UST rims. 2-3 hours of turning, inspecting and about 1,000 pushes of the pump later, i've got the Nokian NBX's mounted, ditching about 150-170 grams per wheel.

Sunday, the tires have held air all night, this is gonna work! roll-out to the race w/Thom and Miriam, blue skies, light breeze, temps in the 70's, dry course, an absolutely picture perfect day for riding yer bike in the woods. Mo, Kerry, Stan (from the elite road team, riding his brother's old mtbike), Tiff, Skip are all on-hand.

Have a great start, the best of the season. Matt takes a smarter approach, drafts through the straight and snags the whole shot. Crazy-fun course. Mildly technical swooping, rolling singletrack. Banked turns, huge speed, letting it rip on the short descents and gliding or powering-up the short ascents. About 2miles into the speed-fest, as i'm coming around a banked turn, the front tire burps air big time. have to stop, re-inflate, am now pretty worried about my plan. A mile later, burps again, add even more air, hoping with ~40psi it'll stay, but now down to less than 1 CO2. Work hard for the rest of the 5.5m lap, legs feel amazing, the rest wk has done me good, almost bridge back up to Matt, see Thom (who got lost for a cpl mins on the first lap), get into the fun stuff and roll the rear tire right off the rim while also burping some air out of the front, am pretty much f'd. Can put a tube in one of the wheels, but need 2 - and need more air... i stand on the side of the trail for a cpl minutes, letting the situation sink-in.

Stan, out for a day of fun on his brother's old mtbike, stops to see if i need help, i wave him on, it's time to do the unthinkable - take the DNF. first DNF since i crashed-out of solo "world's" in '04. I came to experiment w/something new, it didn't work... will I try it again... the messageboards on the Stans site point towards this working, why didn't it work for me? not enough air pressure? not the right tires? the beads on the NBX lites seemed great for it, much better than the beads on any other tubed tire in my collection... the weight savings is significant, i'd really like for it to work, but won't try it out for the first time in a race situation again!, that's for sure...

Thom nails another 1st in SS, Mo takes 3rd. i had the crazy legs and wasted the opportunity, stupid, but there's always another race - and now a little fuel for the fire.