Westside Dirty Benjamin

At the start, a happy and only slightly confident Dave. In the bottom right corner of this shot you can see a very unique single speed. A unicycle. Someone was going to do 106 miles on a uni! Qman was impressed. I was wondering about the taint damage.

At the half way. I was pretty bummed because I was working pretty hard and hadn't passed anyone in a long way. Only a few had passed me and my pace was relatively strong. I told myself I would back half. Anyway, I rode up to a group of four who were chatting away and one dude asked me what I just ate. I didn't compute until he said you rebound fast. I chalked that up to the fact that a small group passed me up a hill about an hour before. I was delerious and in a no talk zone as they blew by on their "super brutal cyclocross bikes" (say in a dorkey robot voice) anyway, I said thanks and hit the gas for a 15 minute leg burner. Needless to say that was my only tactical move of the day.

I rode into the halfway a litle despondant, but after my slight move on the 4 cyclo dudes I thought I might be aable to reel in a few more after the refuel. I rolled in to see the whole family and about 40 or 50 people laying around in the grass. I thought fuck there are only about 40 or 50 people in front of me by my calculation and here they all are. So, I never got off the bike I grabbed a Starbucks double shot and pounded 1/2 a pbj and took off right as Jess was saying "everybody is taking like 10 minutes what are you doing?" I guess to everybody, wifey included, I looked like a tool rushing in and out. I just figured, hey I'm going to make you idiots chase me. So I took off. I counted 20-25 tire tracks in the road as I was whaling away trying to put as much distance between me and the "slackers." Then the trail got a little loose and the gravel gave way to a section of very powdery dust. My bigger tires didn't seem to notice. But, it made tracking really easy b/c all the bikes in front of me were searching for purchase. I counted tracks. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...no fat tires. What the hell...in the gravel each pair looked like two bikes. When they began to weave around climbing in the dusty ground I could make out each pair individually. Holy shit...now I really began to whale. At about this time I was feeling like the back half strategy was going to pay off. A group of 3 went by noticebly faster than me, and blew by a turn. As I slowed to turn around and go back I yelled out to them and a broken spoke flew into my der and crunch good buy xt der and hanger. 1 hour later and 40 riders passing I have a SS and a good gear ratio. It was a real bummer to see all those guys go by who I would have been holding off mostlydue to a very flat second half that had very loose gravel...to my advantage. I figure I was going to be able to average 16 on the way home. On the SS I averaged 14. Pretty fast for my first 45 miles on a SS.

Here is a shot of the little dudes. Mack has a red mohawk.

The finish, legs cramping. I had just enough water for a 3 and 1/2 hour second half. It took closer to 4 and 1/2. That left me rationing a little and I finished my rationing with about 1/2 hour to go.

The single speed.

Dirty Hands


Ouch, as the pack comes off.

So, I finished my first official hundie race in pretty exciting fashion. What I can say is that in the first 50 miles I was under 8 hour pace and the second half which was mostly flat or downhill...well, lets just say I managed to limp in. I had a marvelous and spectacular technical. With the help of a bunch of great local riders: Tan (sp) Neal, Jay, and a really cool local shop owner Porter we converted the EMD to a single speed for my roughly 45 mile finish. I hope to pay it forward someday. I had a perfect gear that didn't spinout until I hit 16-17 MPH. It made for a few uncomfortable climbs when my legs were scorched, but I never dabbed. I only changed gears once, stupidly b/c the der was gone. That did make me feel stupid, but hey, nobody will ever know...right. I'm thiking SS is really good for BigDave...less to break. Anyway Dr. MJ is right...new team bikes are in order.