August 26, 2005 — Pieman raced hard yesterday, banging into about 12th place in his age group in a race at Camp Manitoc or something, which put him roughly 30th in the category he raced.  While one of Pieman's teammates ended up in the hospital with a bruised jaw and some stitches in his knee, courtesy of a crash over a slick wooden bridge that put this poor soul face first into a pile of gravel, Pieman's worst injury was a couple of bee stings in that part of my body that meets the seat! 

A female expert racer, who started about three minutes in front of me, apparently balled it up into a beehive, sending the bees aswarming.  I arrived just in time to see her pitch her bike and then herself into a creek; she completely submerged herself.  But the damage had been done:  she had been stung roughly six times, including once on the head, and dropped out of the race.  I don't blame her.  Two stings on my ass and I couldn't sit on my saddle for about ten minutes and didn't get one of the stingers out completely until after the race.  Oddly enough, no one wanted to help me get it out.  

These were the more typical incidents: After about two miles of racing, I saw a guy carrying his ruined bike up a hill back to the parking lot.  A short time later, just a few minutes, I saw another racer pulling his bike up a cliff and back on the trail after he apparently overcooked a corner and rode over the edge.  On the second lap, a rider right in front of me just stopped, climbed off his bike and fell to the ground in agony as his huge quads roiled in cramps.  I myself ran out of water and stopped sweating in the middle of the second lap and had to ask a race marshall for some water, which she thankfully had, but not before she said I should probably stop racing.  I noted her advice, climbed back on, and sprinted up the trail.  All this in addition to the myriad flats, ripped out derailleurs, and broken spokes and chains.

Here's the results page for the Big Valley race (bigvalleyrace.com/content/results2005.html ). One of my riding group, Dave Walker, finished second, and when I saw him he was absolutely nails, drooling with sweat and snot dripping every where. Brad Beeson, who lives close by, spanked the over the 40 set for fourth and Dave Sawitke took 30 seconds out of me on the last climb after I had chased him down and passed him on at least two occasions!

Oh, I'm still sitting on cushioned chairs; I shifted my bike saddle; and I didn't know that bee stings
itched!

pieman

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Pieman consults with personal trainer Simon.

Pieman on the road again with a new set of instructions.