Check out the event write up in Mountain Flyer Magazine: http://www.mountainflyer.com/news.cfm?itemid=301
The race started at 7:00 in the morning and it was chilly (well, by AZ standards, it was probably 65 degrees or so!) I warmed up for a few minutes and lined up as close to the front as possible... about 5 or 6 people back. We were all standing there waiting for the start and I was talking to a guy with dreadlocks on a cannondale... and did not even realize it was Garth Prosser! I have never met him in person, but we have talked through facebook... so it was pretty cool later in the day when we figured it out!
The race started and I passed a few people to make sure I was in the front group when we hit the singletrack. The first 10 miles of the race was pretty uneventful... but with a lot of super fun flowy singletrack and a couple of short climbs. I was feeling pretty good and hanging a couple of hundred yards off the back of the first group of Pro riders on geared bikes, and I was the first singlespeeder in the race so I knew that I had to go for it.
About 15 miles into the race there is a long (12 miles long) stretch of flat forest road... a singlespeeders worse nightmare! I decided to gear a little lower than normal because I am not in the best shape and really paid for it. We had a group of about 10-12 geared guys that were hammering in their big rings in a roadie style paceline... and me hanging on the back at 25+ miles an hour doing everything possible to hang on. I knew my main competition in the race climbs a LOT better than I do... but I am a lot faster on dirt roads and downhills... so this was my chance to get a gap. Well, I managed to hang on for about 8 miles before popping... and I popped hard! After I dropped and was out of the draft... my speed dropped drastically and it was everything I could do to ride on flat roads... and there were 30 miles left!
At the end of a road there is about a mile of nasty steep hike a bike... then pretty much downhill and rolling swoopy fast mostly downhill singletrack to the finish (with a few short climbs thrown in) I was having a BLAST!! By that point in the race I was probably sitting about 30th overall... but managed to catch a bunch of the geared guys... and passed a few guys that got lost. The last 30 miles of this course is probably the most fun of any of the endurance races in AZ... just super fast, fun singletrack with a little techy stuff thrown in every now and then.
In the end I managed the SS win by about 20 minutes, and finished 12th or 13th in the overall geared class... so I was super stoked with the result... and after 4 years of 2nd or 3rd at this race it felt really good!
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