Sandbox Nightmare? Or the best fun ever?

I drove up to Vancouver Wa for the Het Meer GPTB race on sunday knowing that I have to miss the local tuesday night cross race this week and thought it would be good for my skills. The course was well suited for me with a lot of fast up and down sections and tight trees, and a huge 200 meter sand section. The start of the sand was over 6 inches deep but get better after you entered it.

In the A race I practiced before hand and easily made it through the sand and was sure that I would do fine. First lap I was golden through there. But on another section of lap two I burped out most of my air in the front tire, leading to two small wrecks with the poor handling. I was bummed and knew that my tire was done for. So I thought I should go out in a blaze of glory and went for a flier into the sand. And below is the result of such thought out plans.

photos compliments of Matt Haughey

So this was the end of my Men's A race at Het Meer only 12 minutes into the hour long race. I was bummed but refused to not be able to race. With the help of Forest Wilson we ghetto rigged my bike into a singlespeed using my inner chainring and a 17 tooth cog. I signed up for round two and raced the Men's Singlespeed race.

You would think after such a wreck that I would take it easy in the sand. But not me, I wanted to master my sand skills. So for 3 of the 6 laps in the 45 minute race I again played with my face in the sand pit. Riding it twice and then finally running it last lap to not loose anymore positions. I figure in total that I lost over a minute and 5 places to my sandpit time.

In the end I finished 20th out of 47 on a ghetto singlespeed that I had to be careful not to shift to nowhere.

I love cross, even when I am not doing well. I guess I also need to work on my sand riding abilities.