The Gnar Weasels Shredeth: It shredeth some other people, but I was actually okay for the most part...

Once again, I am late in getting this out . . . 

. . . But if you follow my blog, you should be used to that by now.

It’s Gnar Weasels Race Report time, and in an effort to be brief while conserving time, I’ve opted to incorporate some new features into this blog post. 

Let’s start with this . . .

Top Ten Reasons to Race Gnar Weasels

Colin Reuter aka @resultsboy - doing the results
http://www.russcam.com/cycling/130713_gnarweasels/content/130713-0330_large.html

10.  The race is designed and promoted by dudes who like to shred real trails – This means that you’re

not going to find a bunch of double-track or boring ski-slope climbs.

9.  The podium is a bunch of boulders in the woods – No need for anything fancy because rocks make everything more awesome.

Thom Parsons aka @BigBikesThom
aka Ultra Enduro Dyude
aka The Face of Dirtwire.Tv
http://www.russcam.com/cycling/130713_gnarweasels/content/130713-0342_large.html

8.  People come from all around to race it – Texas, California, Connecticut…  It’s just that awesome.

7.  If you are a mountain biker you will have an advantage over the fittest of the roadies – sure, they might stomp you into the ground at Winding Trails, but at Gnar Weasels, the ground grows teeth and devours them! (Gnom, Gnom, Gnom…)

6.  Weasels are cute – plus, Weasel races are known to be great fun in the cyclocross world… Night

 Weasels and Ice Weasels. Good and Good.

Photo by Ben Stephens
Thanks for making me look fast.

5.  Beer Marshalls – If you’re really thirsty and need some carbs on the fly, you might be lucky enough to encounter someone offering you a nice cold beer.  Oddly enough, nobody offered me a beer, but that might be because I looked really focused (which I was).

4.  Bacon – I don’t typically eat meat.  Nor did I have any during the race.  Nor was I offered any (probably for the same reason nobody offered me any beer), but I am told that there was a fine young man out there making sure that people would not go hungry.  I’m also told that you had to eat bacon to get beer… that might explain why I didn’t get offered beer. 

3.  Since I’m on the topic of food… TACO TRUCK – Where else can you find a taco truck out in the middle of the woods!?

2.  Gnar Weasels is the week before nationals (at least it was this year) – It turns out that the nationals course for 2013 is extremely rocky and technical.  Gnar Weasels is the ultimate primer for the rocks at Bear Creek in PA. 

Feed Zone - That might be a bowl of bacon on that table.

1.  Rocks, Roots, and GNAR – As I’ve already mentioned, this course requires some tech know-how. 

And riding rocks is my absolute favorite, so this makes Gnar Weasels number 1!

Now here's how the race played out for me:

With 7 elite women at the start line, I was looking forward to a competitive race, and Gnar Weasels and the rest of the ladies delivered.  The first five minutes pretty much predicted how the race would turn out.  Karen got the hole-shot while Mo followed close behind, and Ellen and I were back and forth for much of the first lap.  By the second lap, Ellen pulled away as I stopped for a bottle, and then the traffic started to get congested. 

Photo by Russ Campbell
Bike race PRO-tographer

Eventually I lost site of her as I had to continually battle against the traffic as men passed me and I passed them back.  With legs still tired from the Patapsco race less 7 than days before, I didn’t have much fight in me. 

I finished in a solid 4^th within 5 minutes of the Karen, and ten minutes ahead of 5^th.  I’ll check that one off as a success, and maybe next time, I'll rest in between races (yeah right).  

I hope you enjoyed the new format.  I’m also going to try this (here’s hoping the interactive features are compatible with blogger – if not, too bad, so sad):

And that should do it.  I’ve got to get to my MTB Nats race report some time before the next race.    

**Now that I've hit publish, it looks like that interactive thingy works... sweet.  Enjoy.