mammoth

 Saturday was the Mammoth Gravel Classic in St. Croix Falls.  Derek dropped by and we rode out past Lowes Creek to meet up with the rest of the EC group heading out. In all their was 8 of us which was a pretty awesome showing for a random 70 mile ride.

 This was my first taste of the whole gravel road ride thing and it ended up being a lot of fun.  After the roll out I didn't bother trying to hang with the lead pack but found a nice group to tuck in with until we hit the first gravel section.  I finally felt like I got a chance to use my fat tires and especially through the sand sections I got to catch and pass a lot of the cross bikes.  I stopped at the first beer stop and ran into Morgan of the Fast Crusade blog, had a quick beer, and grabbed a roadie before getting back on the bike.  This is where stuff got a little sketchy.  The gravel section out was a breeze, but afterwards the ride hit a long straight blacktop section.  By this point I was riding alone into the headwind and had no choice but to just plug along on the MTB waiting for some tree cover, gravel, or at least a hill to break up the monotony.  Had I spent more time looking at the ride I would have noticed that it was 50% blacktop which made me feel very slow and ill-equipped for a few large sections.

After what felt like forever the ride finally came into some hills and some scenery change.  The second stop point was a gas station which I decided to skip.  My legs felt a little heavy but I had enough energy to just keep trucking along.  And so thats what I did.  I ended up riding with a couple different people the last half of the ride and decided to blow off the final stop because I was still buzzing along with plenty of food and water and the sky was growing darker pushing me to roll in before the rain really started coming down.  I finally got hit by the rain the last 5 minutes or so of rolling into town which was nothing knowing that their was a couple coolers of beer awaiting me at the finish.  All in all it was a really fun ride and needed prep for the Strada Fango this weekend.  We all sat down and had a little grub before heading back into town where I ate pizza and drank beer all night.  Wish I would have grabbed more riding pictures but didn't take the time too.  Too bad so sad.