15 years ago
Monday, February 4, 2008
Fontana Village, NC
Icycle 2006 - 30 degrees, sloppy mud, and snowing...
Icycle 2007 - 24 degrees, Icy, Frozen mess...
Icycle 2008 - 60 degrees and sunny? What happened?
Knoxville crew before the race
I skeptically ventured out for the Icycle this past weekend, expecting a sufferfest of epic proportions... Instead I got a nice weekend of R&R with some of the warmest weather I had seen in weeks.
Going with the expected theme of suffering, I figured Fontana would be a great course for a first attempt at spinning around on a singlespeed. I'm not really sure how I've made it this far without riding a singlespeed offroad for more than 5 minutes. But it sounded like a good idea at the time, so there I was, waiting for the lemans start and hoping 32x18 was my favorite gear...
The race course was in surprisingly good condition, considering that it had rained quite a bit in the days before. A few spots were wet, but 90% of the course was perfect. Rocking the singlespeed was definitely different, but it was a good time. As for the gearing, I probably should have run a 19t, as I was mashing the majority of the race. The race was quite short, with the singlespeed race being a whopping 9.5 miles. Sweet, we almost did the distance of a beginner class XC race... In the end, I came in 12th out of the 40 or so singlespeeders, so it looks like I have a little more work to do figuring out the SS thing...
The race course was in surprisingly good condition, considering that it had rained quite a bit in the days before. A few spots were wet, but 90% of the course was perfect. Rocking the singlespeed was definitely different, but it was a good time. As for the gearing, I probably should have run a 19t, as I was mashing the majority of the race. The race was quite short, with the singlespeed race being a whopping 9.5 miles. Sweet, we almost did the distance of a beginner class XC race... In the end, I came in 12th out of the 40 or so singlespeeders, so it looks like I have a little more work to do figuring out the SS thing...
Singlespeed Action
Coming soon to a 12 hour near you? Who knows...
Coming soon to a 12 hour near you? Who knows...
Afterwards, we spun around for another lap, and then watched the nighttime downhill. Watching the downhill guys practice was pretty sweet, as you could see 6 or 8 guys hauling down the mountain 10 ft apart with lights blazing. Since I like keeping the number of bones in my body at exactly 206, the downhill is not my thing... But kudos to those guys, they are fearless. Overall, the Fontana weekend was good times and a great way to ease in to the 2008 season.
Nighttime Downhill
0 Comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)