Mudfest 2008

The rain from last weekend found it's way back to thoroughly soak the course for Sunday's Greenbrier Challenge. After a second pre-ride Thursday and a warm up ride at Patapsco Saturday I was expecting a dry fast course, that was until the biblical rains came and dumped several inches of rain overnight. I spent most of the week getting the bike ready and as of this post I'm officially ending my relationship with the Singleator. I decided to go with a gearing for the climbs but in the end the chain length to do so caused issues and pretty much ruined the day, along with my dead legs.

Two stops to repair the drivetrain and a lot of running pretty much summed up the race. I had planned a strong finish really only looking at Mayhew as the lone competition.
The highlight of the course was the final downhill, a washed out, muddy, rooty mess with a steady stream of water flowing down it with some large stone and log waterbars at the bottom to launch off of. It almost made all of the climbing worth it. I finished 10th, well of my goal. I'm boxing up all of my Singleator parts and shipping them back to Surly with a letter, hopefully my new tensioner is sitting down at Avalon Cycles.

Maddy is growing up so fast. She's trying to sit up on her own and loves her new Bumbo chair. She's such a happy baby, always smiling even when she's crying like last night when she went to bed. She started to cry but was smiling at me the whole time at me as I tried to calm her. She also loves her feet, they're probably her favorite toys. Whenever she's cranky I just take her feet out of her sleeper, whenever she has the chance they go right in her mouth.