Why Not?

There is one more race on my calendar. Tomorrow, I’ll do my first-ever singlespeed race. It’s the North Carolina Single Speed Championship. Since I can count the number of times on one hand I’ve actually ridden my SS on a trail, this is probably not the greatest idea I’ve ever had. I’m not always known to make wise decisions though.


Why a race? I dunno. I’m really starting to enjoy singlespeeding, and I figured there was no better way to turn it up a notch than to enter a race. I don’t think I’ll do very well, but that’s not my intention. This time, my goal is just to finish. I rode out at the Whitewater Center on my SS a while back, and it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t ride the trail at a super fast “race pace”, so having a little competition out there may motivate me to put the hammer down a little. Unlike most of the other races I do, I’m not nervous about this one at all. There’s nothing at stake for me, so that means I can go out at ride with little pressure to do well. That’s just the kind of race I should be doing anyway.


Even though I spent my time on yesterday’s post talking about how much I’m hurting, I figured that I have at least one last hurrah left in me this season. To top it off though, I’m now a little bit sick. Yuck. Like I said though, this one doesn’t really count for anything to me. I just wanna go out and hit the trail with other one-geared people. Hopefully I can get through this race with no problems.




I’m not really worried at all, even though I’ve pretty much pieced together my SS 29er out of spare parts. It seems to work just fine, but upgrades will be in my future. I’ll just take it one step at a time, and see how this weekend goes. I’ll try to have a “race” report on Monday, if I’m not still out there walking up the climbs. Running a 32X18 should be good enough, but I have a feeling that I’ll be pretty worn out when it’s all over. That’s fine by me.