Giver6er?

Another day, another tough race. I’ve been looking forward to racing this one again. The inaugural 8 hour giver8er was a huge success. What could be more fun than 8 hours on a great course?

I should have known. The day started poorly. Had a terrible sleep, Julia was up a few times and was very vocal. Even poor David woke up because she was too noisy. I dragged myself out of bed and had a quick shower. I had most of my stuff organized from the day before, which was good. Had a quick and uneventful drive to the course.

Registered in the tent and got my number plate. Looked like it was going to be a very nice day, just like last year’s event. I set up my food in the solo pit area and headed to the starting area.

After a few minutes, the field was off. We had a bit of a bottleneck at the start going up a short climb. I wasn’t in any hurry, pacing myself for a long day in the saddle. We wound up the hill and entered the singletrack. This course has a ton of it, not a lot of room to pass.

I was doing quite well until I did something very uncharacteristic: I crashed. On a portion of the trail that wasn’t even overly technical. Shit. Someone directly behind me stopped to make sure I was ok (thanks!) I had done an over the bars hands first landing. I stil can’t believe my wrists are ok. My bike, unfortunately, was not.

The brake lever was toast, I had no way to fix it. My knee was bleeding and sore as well. Great. I timidly finished off my lap and headed to the COP bike shop to see if they could help me. No luck. I jumped into the truck and headed down to Bow Cycle.

The bad news: no ORO brake products in stock. Good news: he was going to try to Macgyver a fix. It took over an hour, but he finally got it running and I raced back to COP.

I knocked off a few more laps in the afternoon, turning the Giver8er into the Giver6er. My two hour break did nothing for my body. I felt sluggish and tired almost the entire afternoon. Happy I got to finish, but disappointed in the result. I was well on my way to a good 10 or 11 lap finish before I bit it.