Bar-H Bash 2008

The Texas Championship Series continued after Mas o Menos with the Yeti/Mad Duck Bar-H Bash. Let's go down the list of ominous signs, ill-portents, and bad juju that surrounded this race:

• The weather consisted of high winds, light rain, and dark skies. A general doom-is-approaching-get-your-butt-indoors kinda vibe. My heart goes out to the beginners women racers who stuck it out to the end for their trophies. The wife and I didn't make it past the junior riders. Sorry - we tried.
  
• The plenitude of tire pressure sucking foliage. I pulled my bike out of the car to find a flat rear tire and a little black thorn picked up in the pre-ride from the day before. I'm sorry, were you hoping to pass using the side of the trail? You'll have to pass through the tire-doom-thorn-vines to do that!
• How often do you accidentally bend your rear derailleur tab enough to cause shifting problems? How often does it happen ten minutes before the start of the race? I owe the Mad Duck mechanic an iced bucket of longnecks for that save.
  
• I'll spare you the port-a-potty descriptions. They made tenting in Terlingua look like a night at the Four Seasons.

The Bar-H folks put on a good race. A big race. Yeti was there with Seth looking scruffier than I pictured him over the phone. They brought a fleet of sweet Yeti demo bikes. A Spot Bikes trailer and the Mad Duck RV (of course) arrived as well. Dallas gave a huge turnout of riders of all types. The race came with cool chainring trophies and a pretty well organized start. The gals running the result sheets were getting times and ranks up lightning fast.

The Bar-H Bash Course
The course started flat for about two miles running over exposed jeep road and wooded singletrack before hitting the main climb. The ascent got a little tricky in parts, but it transitioned pretty fast to a short rocky rolling ridge line trail. Then a couple of quick bombing descents led into a series of twisty rolling hills with a lot of fun woop-dee-doos and tight corners. Then the flats arrived with a short ravine half-pipe and a loose gravelly run along the bottom of the same to break up time in the strong wind. It all ended with a trip back into the previously mentioned wooded singletrack before landing a short uphill finish. Personally I found it too sandy in parts. You'll see why in my rundown...

My Bar-H Bash Rundown
A lot of local Dallas boys sprinted off the line, blew up their lungs, and then sat up after 5 minutes. Due to a poor performance on the start line by yours truly, I had to pass them all. Joy. Then I somehow tangled my bar ends with a rider I tried to pass. That ended poorly as I was then passed by half a dozen riders I had just worked to get around not 30 seconds before. Ugh. Fortunately I blazed the climb, cleaning the whole thing. This included a short steep sandy left turn that I couldn't clean in the pre-ride. By the time I hit the top of the main descent after rocking the ridge line, I had picked off about another ten riders. But the course and my ride so far did start to go downhill. I figured my place to be somewhere in the top five at this point, so I tried to hammer the twisty rolling hills after the descent as fast as possible. Naturally this led to me crashing. Deep enough sand at the bottom of hills planted my front wheel and threw me over the bars. Twice. Between both faceplants, I had three riders pass me. Plus, the stem on the Yeti was twisted, but not enough for me to loss time trying to tweak it straight again. Working my butt off in the strong winds on the flats let me catch one of them before heading into the last section of wooded singletrack. I tried like heck to catch the next rider after that, but he turned out to be in a different category and I hammered through the finish line in seventh place out of 41 riders.

End notes:

• My first try with a Cliff Shot. Yech - but worth the carbo kick.
• I recommend Sarah's on the Square in Gainesville. It used to be a saloon/brothel, but now serves excellent cuisine instead of frontier entertainment.
• Time to switch to tubeless. I don't want to make excuses for the two crashes but...
• Clint Fontenot, the 30-39 beginner points series leader, rode a great race coming in first again. I plan to be glued to the rear wheel of his Cannondale in Waco. Unless of course Seth is there instead.
  
• Hello to Nick, Lynne and the Martinez(?) family!