St. Fatty's Day Bike Race

    

Last Saturday, at the last hour I decided to head up to Gaylord's Marsh Ridge Resort to the St. Fatty's Day Fat Tire Bike race. The race was originally set to be for snow bikes, but with the lack of snow, the race was altered a bit to be more mountain bike friendly. At registration I found I only had one competitor in the race, the lovely Vita Morse, who is usually seen riding around Traverse City on a tandem. As we lined up, we were told we would race for 1.5 hours, the course was about 2 miles long, and we would be told when we had one lap to go. Basically it was a long crit on a mountain bike. It was a mas start, and here is some cool footage that my husband, Russ took of the beginning of the race:

Now, I am thinking, its just Vita and me, no reason to go gunning for anything, right? Well, Vita had other plans as she hit the ground running right out the gate. She was a tough competitor and put the game on right away. I was slow to wake up, and was painfully slow at times going through  the maze of a course that was set up. There were some very tight corners to maneuver, three sand pits, a few short, steep hills, and a few bridges to ride over. It was a fun course in all, and the snow bikes definitely had the advantage in the sand pits. I opted to cyclocross style it through the sand pits by jumping off my bike and running through the sand versus trying to pedal through it. I tried once to pedal through and decided that the amount of energy that it sucked out of my legs wasn't worth it. This is where I finally passed Vita after about 4 laps. She was never far behind me though, which kept pushing me through the end of the race. In the end I did 8 laps, and overall that includes at least 16 hills and 24 sand pits.  That's pretty tough for a two mile lap race!  Thanks to Einstein Cycles, Marsh Ridge, and the volunteers for putting on the event. And thanks to Vita for pushing me out there!

2nd and 1st place finishers!