Monday, November 10, 2008

DNF

DNF stands for many things...
  • Digital Noise Filters
  • Disjunctive normal form in boolean logic
  • Duke Nukem Forever, a yet to be released computer game notable for its extremely long development
  • "Did not finish" in racing parlance
  • Digital National Framework
  • Domain Name Forum
  • Dynamic Network Factory
  • "Do Not Fragment" bit sometimes used in packet switching.
  • "Did not find" - a term used in Geocaching to indicate that a cache was not found.
  • Dungeon & Fighter, a Korean multiplayer PC beat 'em up video game.
But of that unnecessarily informative list, the only one that matters to me is "Did Not Finish".

My wife and i got to the race with 2 hours till my start time. I figured i would try to ride the course and get a glimpse and get my legs warm too. But after arriving i chickened out after seeing all the awesome looking racers there...feeling a bit self-conscious. We decided to go for a walk, register, and go sit in the car a bit longer. Around 9 i got dressed, Darryl showed up, the Enduro's took off for their 5 hour ridiculous-a-thon.

I was feeling very confident in my abilities as a cyclist, we lined up our bikes, and then i was feeling very confident in my abilities as a runner. So as the lady counted down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...i sprinted. I got to the bikes 2nd out of like 40 people and then i was 10th all of a sudden because i suck at clipping into my eggbeaters. But yet redemption! I was 3rd into the woods i believe. I found it easy to go cruising past everyone on the gravel road leading up to the woods. Once in the woods, i re-thought exactly why i was doing this race, and i couldn't think of a good reason. I also thought, "man i should have pre-rode this course" in-between all these realizations are groups of irrationally put together expletives.

So i was hanging on, following these two dudes that were just booking through the woods. The ground felt slippery because of all the leaves mixed with my poor handling skills resulted in my fear, which came to fruition minutes later. We approached this quick sharp downhill with a S-turn to boot, also at the bottom right before you jolt up is a VERY narrow bridge, that knowing me, i could very well miss altogether. I flipped out in my mind and then my handlebars went sideways on the S-turn and i went over which resulted in the 3 people immediately behind to wreck as well and the remaining 30 some people behind them to brake and stop which no doubt probably caused a small collision on the up hill right before my embarrassing S-turn fiasco. At that point i let pretty much everyone roll by.

I chased a few people down and was beginning to hope again and had some fun on a few whoops and then i saw a great jump approaching quickly, so i did the natural thing and pulled up as i went off the drop off and when i landed all hell broke loose. My right hand popped off the bars and then the bars caught a tree and i got launched. As i was getting up i saw some other racers coming down the hill and i got my bike of their way, hopped on and just hoped to finish the race altogether.

The first half of the course was technical and the second half very flat and fast, lots of room to open it up which i did. So after getting passed by a couple 12 yr olds right before the finish, i was thinking "all i have to do is make it through the technical portion and i'm golden" . The word "finish" became my mantra. I came up on the last difficult section, which was about 5 steep switchbacks. I loved anything uphill because i could blast through it and pass everyone; downhills were a complete 360 from that. So as i'm "blasting" up the switchbacks excited to get cruising and stretch my legs out, my chain blows off....

I had been having problems with my Rear Derailleur jumping around on the middle cogs. The chain broke at the master link (which i doubt i'll ever use again) and i'm guessing due to the jumping around, the master link got caught on a tooth weird and just separated. I walked out of the woods and was excited to watch Darryl finish. Darryl took 10 mins off his first lap which is awesome but no official results yet. I'm encouraging Darryl to continue to race MTB. I think he'll do quite well. As opposed to me, who shall never race MTB again, and maybe not even ride.

(don't mind the text from the pic...)Ben and i are preparing to train a ton together this winter/spring. I found a killer hill (12% to 16% grade) about 20 miles from my house. So on a 40 mile ride with a giant in the middle should be a decent couple times a week ride, on top of my 54 miles back and forth to work. Ben also bought a scooter a couple years ago for speed training which i think we can find time to use now. I know Ben is big into sprinting...and more power to him (literally) but i'll stick to losing weight and and cruising up hills. We also just got approved to run races at Old Dominion Speedway. It will be ITT's and track events and maybe we can get in a (2 man ) TTT. That would be cool. Anyway, that will be great also.

I am very excited to race on the road. I'll leave the MTB to Darryl.

(pics and results soon to come!)

1 comment:

darryl said...

A+ post would read again!