My first race
of the 2007 season was the MASS Marysville Team Relay. It was a
slightly different format then most races I've done. Teams of
four were expected to do laps of the course for four hours. Riders
could only do one lap at a time. A lap consisted of a tight, twisty
up and down route through the woods at the Oesterling farm. It was
just under three miles long and took an expert racer around fifteen
mintues to do.
Not only was this my first race of the 2007
season, but it was my first race with my new team. In the fall of
2006 I joined the Mighty Spot Brand team presented by
Twin Six. It's a handful of guys I've been riding and racing
with for a few years now, though the real appeal of the new
team is we're all on singlespeeds.
Being the first weekend of April, the day was a
little chilly. Like any race, arriving at the venue usually demands a trip to
the port-a-john.
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Another nice thing about the
new team is they've been doing this a while. Organization and
preparedness is second nature to their racing
regamin. One of
the guys has this trailer that's wired for electricity and powered
by really quiet generators. That thing in the center
hanging
from the ceiling is a heater. Very nice for a
chilly day in
April.
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A quick team picture for the
folks back home. From left to right: Fitzy, me, Buddy, Matt,
Marc, and Paul.
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Matt showing off his new
Henry's Bikes pink team kit. In addition to racing Spot bikes
and wearing Twin Six clothes, we each wear jersey's
and
shorts for the shops that sponsor us. Most of the guys use
Henry's, but I'm still running out of Bean's. I started playing
with the color
filter on our camera and tried focusing on
just the pink. Didn't come out as well as Jen's color
filter
shots.
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In
addition to the heater in the tailer, we also had one for outside.
It was quite the pit setup.
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Filtering on the blue in Ben's Beans
jersey.
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Here's our team
capton (Fatmarc
) staying warm before his
lap.
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Being a relay, there's a
baton you have to pass from rider to rider. The baton for this relay
was a clothes pin - not exactly easy for people
with gloves and
limited pocket options. The guys on my team ended up stuffing them
up the leg of our shorts for the elastic and spandex to
hold them. When we neared the hand-off area, we fished them out
of our shorts then stuck them in our mouths until we
could transfer them
to the next rider. A lot of spit,
snot and germs were transferred that
day.
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