Honestly this was a long time ago and I guess I meant to write a post. Something must have come up.
But Many, MANY years before this I came to the area for my first MTB race. Thinking shorter was better for me, being pretty green and all. You see I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota and MTBing was in its infancy. You heard about races from word of mouth, from other riders, bike shops, but mostly from reading about them in the magazines.
The Chequamegon 40 in Hayward Wisconsin, was a biggy in my neck of the woods, but still a haul. Silly Green me drove all the way out there to do the first day of short track on the bunny hill and got smoked in the grass. Dejected, but some how still wanted to pursue racing.
My second race wasn't much better....
That one was in Redwing Minnesota, Nothing close to the Twin Cities of course. It had rained the night before and the clay was making bricks on my narrow seat stays and power cam brakes on my Cannondale Mountain Bike. So much so, it forced the bike to stop and me to dig out the clay bricks. LOL It took so long to complete my pre ride that I missed the start. The clay had dried enough that they started the race. Crazy. So dejection number 2 was in the books. But I did learn the importance of seat and chain stay clearance. Oh the memories.
Some years after that, my friend Steve (he was born and raised in Wisconsin) and we managed the resources to get to the Chequamegon 40. That was a big deal for us at the time.
Having no Strava or Garmin files from that era, just memories. No camera phones back then and I can't remember when I last knew where the photographs were.
So it is nice that I rode the IMBA Epic that would all these years later jog my memory and let me recall those early early days of mountain biking for better or worse....
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