Good Proto, good boy.

Well, I think I said I wasn't going to race this weekend, I guess that was a lie.  I had been eyeing up the "Get Fat with Pat" race at the MN River Bottoms since Deathrider showed me around a few weeks back.  It is hard to pass up a Penn race because they are always a blast.  Also, Hillside is an extra 45 minutes of driving and I had plans for Sunday.  I robbed studs out of my old Nokians and loaded the two middle rows on my Escalators.  Studs like these are worthless when you lean the bike over hard.

It looked like a great turnout considering there were 2 other races going on that day.  The course had seen warmer temps then when I was out there, so now it was a mix of snow, mud, ice, dirt, and flooded over ice.  Chris Fisher, Jeff Young, and I got a small gap pretty early on.  I kept yo-yoing off the back as my chain would fall of my recent drivetrain modification and I would work my way back up.  Fisher would flat and Barry Tungsteth would follow close behind.  The race was 2 laps of an 8 mile course and I got a gap on Jeff while we hit the trail on the second lap.  The second lap would prove to be an even wetter and muddier affair as the warm temps would melt off ice and unfreeze the mud.  I would go on to finish it out for the win with mud on my face and freezing water up my nether regions.

Thanks to Cory "El Lion" Gross for the pics.  Josh has some good ones here as well.  A fire at the start and midpoint in the laps (complete with Hooligans) helped with the atmosphere.

Body is firing on all cyclinders.  I could have gone out for lap three and probably would have, but conditions (and me) were so wet by then and the temp was dropping.  Feeling the best I ever have going into AH.  Now, if only the lungs cooperate.

This section was early in the lap; me leading us through the swamp area on lap 1.

Me again, making some kind of smart remark to "El Lion"

We would ride in the water about 100 yards past where the water narrows in the distance.  You could ride in the grass, but that was incredibly slow.  I think everyone rode on the water's edge which was about 4" deep over ice.  Really, really fun.