recovery

 It's been two days since the Valleycat and I still feel like my body is recovering.  Don't be mistaken however, thats a good thing.  Thursday night I got out of work at 4 headed home and started my four day weekend off cracking a Shlitz and then heading down to the Cn'H  for 2-for-1 burgers.  The Court-n-House is kind of a Thursday night tradition, and since they started selling veggie burgers I can finally join in the fun. Besides Thursdays it is also just probably one of my favorite bars ever, good beer, grill open all night, good staff, and only a couple blocks away. But I digress.

We filled up and split for the ride.  It was a surprisingly small crew for a pre-Valleycat ride, but tons of fun none the less. Hit up the mini-golf course did some more rideing and ended up at the top of the world where we were company to a couple of groups of different people before Sam and Matt met up with us. 

 Much fun was had, but at some point we decided to split and head back to bike house for some more beers. 

The rest of the night was kind of a blur.

 Friday I went out to Northwest for a bit of riding to try and work off some of the pizza and beer from the night before and to kill time before the Spag feed at Derek's. A group of us met up at Bike and Sport and rode around town for a bit before ending up at Dereks where we were treated to Spaghetti, Garlic Bread, and homemade sauce.  Total ridiculous carbo-loading accompanied by another couple cases of beer.

A few of us cut out and headed down to Sam and Matt's to chill there for a bit and talk to some people who were in town for the occasion. We only stayed out for a bit longer then crashed pretty hard. I can't help but note how awesome it is to know that there are little pockets of people around the city that were getting together and eating together, and hanging out, and having fun all weekend just because of this race. That brings us to race day.

                                  

Saturday was not an ideal day for a bike race. It was chilly, drizzly, and windy all day. But judging by the turnout and peoples attitudes most of them didn't get the memo.  Everyone was in a really good mood and just seemed happy to be there.  Two overflowing tables of prizes probably helped the situation quite a bit. 

   

 Jake, Sam and I had talked a bit about riding together prior to the race. So after registering we met up and spent some serious time actually planning the route. Routing is not my strong point. I'm pretty directionally challenged and every single alleycat I've tried to route myself I usually end up putting in way more effort than I should have. But with a few bad misses I actually wanted to do well this year and we sat down and put some thought into it.

The race group ended up being me, Jake, Sam, and his cousin.  There was a ride out to Red Flint and the obligatory Le Mans start and we were off.  Dan picked us up and tailed us for the first half the race.  Through most of the first half we stayed pretty tight but the last few long stretches started to pull the group apart and Dan dropped on the sprint to the last stop at Hendrikson Hill.  I was starting to feel a bit of fatigue and just dropped my head and rode as hard as I could to close the gap on the group, but by the time I looked up near campus Jake and Sam had disappeared. Sam's cousin (sorry I forgot your name) was there and said they headed right at the intersection which I knew was the wrong way so we just kept riding. We got to the hill and slammed down it rear wheel locked up pretty much the whole distance.

I kind of panicked for a minute because I kept expecting to see the checkpoint person right ahead of me but it wasn't until the bottom of the hill I saw him perched in the woods. We got our manifests stamped, waited for the other two guys for a minute and agreed to just keep going ahead with the race solo. Lucky for us we only had one more stop.  Through the last part of the race I didn't see a whole lot of racers out so I figured we were either doing pretty well, or doing pretty bad. Fortunately once we got to Centennial  the checkpoint person said we were in 5th and 6th. I knew we didn't stand a chance on catching the rest of the group because they passed us on our way out, but we agreed to just give it hell on the way out anyway.  I felt kind of bad for dropping an out of towner one stop away from home but I just rode it in.

I guess I got 5th overall which I'm very happy with. I know Sam and Jake could have easily gotten in before me, but I guess they never found the hill, which was a pretty common story that day. Coupled with the weather and some pretty crafty checkpoints I think there were quite a few DNF's which makes me even happier to place 5th out of 86, especially considering some of the talent that finished 1-4. Definitely a pretty brutal race this year, definitely tons of fun.

 Then the real good stuff started. Everybody crammed in the Pavilion for the after party and started into the kegs. Mandatory race story telling, 45 pizzas, three kegs of beer tons of prizes.

 Broken bikes

 Several more cases of beer drank and sprayed all over, and a totally insane dance party put the park to sleep .  Afterwards we picked up and a bunch of us headed back to the Court n'House. After a couple baskets of fries this is where I checked out for the night and headed home. Sunday was a total relax day.  I spent a couple hours at Northwest and from there my body just kind of shut down and I was in bed by 10.

I am not even going to attempt to express the epic proportions of this weekend. If you live in or near Eau Claire, never ever ever miss a Valleycat. Thanks so much to everyone who came out on a kind of crummy day with huge smiles on their faces and made the best of it. I live for this stuff.