I love that you put words to what I have thought a bunch of times.

Also, I had a very different experience of the Twin Lakes aid

I had been leapfrogging Fatty and the Hammer all morning. I was behind at the start, then caught Fatty on Kevins (turns out right after he was sat upon), then chased the Hammer (and Fatty) across the Carter summit. I can attest, he did indeed keep yelling things like “how are you honey?” and “hey sweetie, just let me know if I’m dropping you”. I realized relatively quickly he was not talking to me.

I then caught and passed the Fatty Train on Turquoise Lake road downhill (yeah gears!), then got passed on the uphill, then caught them again just after the turn onto the dirt before Pipeline aid (yeah gears, again!).

Since I am a bad domestique, I did a pretty poor job of pulling the Fatty train on the Pipeline, and kind of rode away (gears, again)…then on the dirt road just before the neighborhood on the way to Twin Lakes, I got caught again.

This is where Fatty was joking with the other single speeders…

I thought to myself “Self, this is the best LT100 ever! You’re riding with friends, you’re making jokes, you’re not totally at your limit, and while you’re behind a sub-9, you’re damn straight on track for a 9:45. Maybe a 9:30″

My legs felt great, I was not too tired, and I even had a little extra energy to laugh. Even better, being a bit of a LT100 geek at this point (4x…), having a beloved cycling blogger and a major character in his blog count me as a friend and spare some air to cheer me on made me feel..well..part of the family.

So of course I did the only logical thing.

I sprinted off.

I did yell out “NEW GOAL! BEAT FATTY TO TWIN LAKES!!”.

I was not totally a jerk. I thought to myself “hey, you have gears. Attack this flat/DH a bit and you can tell the crew to be ready for the Fatty Train!”.

(See, in his totally generous self, Fatty offered to share his crew spot with me, giving my mom — ace crew — a place to shelter from the sun, and have a great morning. There’s more to this story…but that’s for another blog on another day.)

I rode into the crew area shouting “They’re right behind me, they’re right behind me!”

This was my greatest moment of the race. I had beat 2 former LT100 champions (ok, ok, they were on single speeds…and I beat them by like 5 seconds, but I did beat them) to Twin Lakes. I had done something of a good deed by waking up the crew. I was having a great day and ready for a nice calm resupply…as mine always are.

This is when I experienced the madness of the Fatty Crew Feed at the LT100.

“Who’s right behind you!!?” (not sure who said that. May have been Chris. May have been Mom . May have been The Man Formerly Known as IT Guy)

“FATTY! and The HAMMER” I yelled.

Then I mostly heard Hammer yelling. And my mom yelling.

Then I heard skidding tires and The Monster yelling, “Help! Help! I NEED HELP!”

I have no idea what happened. All I know is Gu and water and electrolytes were flying everywhere. I kept saying “Don’t help me, help Fatty!”. Mom stuck bottles in my cages, and The Man Formerly Known as IT Guy grabbed my helmet and said “YOU’RE NOT EATING ENOUGH” before he gave me a massive push down the road.

And I was rolling…

It was awesome. Never felt more like part of an MTB team than I did at that moment on that day (and I was too fat to wear the jersey…I guess thats appropriate?)

Can’t wait to see how the next section turns our for The Fatty Crew. They may not know it, but for the next 20 miles they were instrumental to my race…

Nicely done putting letters to that sound.

You mugged another rider, didn’t you….

Is that correct, or were you making a sexist jab? :o)

That’s correct. I wasn’t trying to be sexist…I just said it, then saw how it could be perceived as sexist, which I think was the actual moment of sexism. OH HOW CONFUSING.

Later, however, I would say things that were just downright rude. I’ll get to (the first of) those in my next post. – FC

It crossed my mind, but it would have been a nightmare salmoning that trail. I did something else. Something elegant and simple and perfect that solved the problem and cost time at all. – FC

On the other hand, you were The Hammer’s domestique! All to your credit.

You should probably steel yourself. There’s more coming. For whatever reason, I was verbally more aggro in this race than I usually am. I made The Hammer roll her eyes several times. I can’t be the hero in every story I tell (well, I could be, but would that really be believable?).