Mtn. bike season is here.

Warm weather has finally hit the mtns. of Asheville. I actually went out in shorts and short sleeves this weekend, and got a bit warm on some of the climbs. I know we will have a cold snap or two before it really stays warm but I will take it, better yet I needed it.

My wife, Melanie and I are planning on doing a 6 hour race this weekend in GA. We are both going to do it on our single speeds in the coed class. It works out really well, we hand off both the baton as well as our two little monkeys. We attempted a 12 hour race last Summer and quickly found out that 12 hours was just too much. While we watched others enjoy the down time between their laps, eating, changing clothes, getting themselves cleaned up, we had to hustle around and entertain two high energy kiddo's.

That transitioned to dealing with two grumpy little kids about half way through the day. You actually seemed to get more rest while you were riding your bike. We had a deal that at any point if either one of us had enough we would pack it up and go home, no discussion. So with about 3 hours to go and with us in first place in our class we decided we had maxed out the fun meter and it was time to go home. As I started packing up the race announcer saw what we were doing and came over and tried to talk us out of heading home. Nothing doing, though he did have a hard time figuring out why we would drop out when we were likely going to win the race.

By doing "only" 6 hours we should avoid the meltdown stage and keep everyone happy.
We are both looking forward to it, and it will be a good way to kick off the offroad racing season. Once we get it going the races come thick and fast, I put together a potential race calendar and we have only 3 weekends with no races between now and the second weekend in August. I am sure we will miss some of those but to have so many options will be nice.