Monday, October 11, 2010

Coming home with the hardware - but no jersey

I'll do a longer post (there are plenty of entertaining stories to tell) when I get home, but for now, suffice to say:
-We broke the old Moab lap record (in your face, Seedorf!) but did not win - Jay/Ross/Kalan/Len broke the record by even more. At mid-morning, we got the gap down to about 30 minutes, but they pulled back away. Congrats to those guys - their lap record (22, same as we did, but they finished about 40 minutes ahead) will probably stand forever.
-We also fought hard against Colin Cares' badass Hammer Nutrition team, and only ended up beating them (they also did 22 laps) by about 15 minutes. Great job, guys!
-It was really cool to stand on the podium at a national championship. I'm guessing that will be the only time that happens in my life. Got some pictures of the awards(none of the race itself, unfortunately), I'll post them when I'm back.
-I did not sleep even a single minute during the race - I was way too keyed up. I felt fine until about 2pm yesterday, and then I crashed. Slept 14 hours last night and I'm still exhausted.
-I do not want to ride a mountain bike again for at least a week. I'm going to yoga and the climbing gym, thanks.
-I was not the slowest rider on our team, nor was I close to the fastest, and I accomplished my twin goals of not embarrassing myself and not getting hurt.

Thanks to everyone who texted encouragement (some of you at like 3am!) I had a great time, and hopefully we'll be back next year to try again for those stars and stripes jerseys.

3 comments:

Luis G. said...

Great work!

Corey said...

You were so fast I never even saw you pass me, which I'm sure you did multiple times! :D

Anonymous said...

Kick ass, Walt. I checked in on you at the end of my shift, and you guys were smokin'. Way to not get hurt or embarrass yourself.