Lodi Report: City Bikes Rocks!

Short version: City Bikes riders ROCKED the 12 hrs of Lodi Farms! First place duo clydesdale (singlespeed) Joel Gwadz, first place solo singlespeeder RickyD (10 laps!), first place sport 3man team, Scardaville and MattyD, second place sport 3 man was me, Kent and DmofoT, 3rd place Expert 3 man (after racing Poolesville!) Evan, Chris and Eric!

WOOHOO! Not only that, but the City Bikes Team Truck was put into service at 4am powering the start/finish area after their generator crapped out. That gen ran from 5:30pm on Sat until 3pm on Sunday without a single problem. Whoa. DT and I rolled the big truck down to the race with the laptop on the dash, pumping through the home stereo that I hooked up in the truck off the generator. DT pulled his 80g hard drive in and we had over 90g of music for the ride down. I forgot the grill, but we had 4 straight hours of Misfits! We managed to get the truck up to 55mph! Rock on. The truck really pulled through. DT and I lived in it and everybody managed to find some time to hang out. DT slept on the floor and I bunked on one of the carpeted shelves. With Kent pulling opening duties, I had two hours to hunker down and rest while DT had 4 hours to sleep. More on the race below...

MattyD and Scardaville's team named themselves 'Not Klasmeier's Team City Bikes' after they misread my email and replaced me... Bastards. I saw their registration and we went with 'Klasmeier's Team City Bikes,' just to be contrarian. They beat us by 11minutes.

We started in first with Kent rocking 2 hours for two laps plus the 1/2 mile Le Mans start. I managed to run through 2 laps in just short of two hours (57 min avg) and DT proceeded to have two bad laps with a broken helmet, backflip, broken light, etc. He had all of our team's problems. That was nice of him, eh? We managed to get back in first place after I hunted and passed Scardaville (never thought that would happen), closing a 2.5 minute gap and putting 30 seconds back into them. DT got passes by Jonathan and he put in a SOLID 53min lap, putting us about 15 minutes back. Kent and I doubled up on the last laps pulling in sub-hour laps and cutting their lead to 11 minutes by the end of the race. I went out at 11:50ish for our last lap so that we could end with 13 laps, same as 'Not Klasmeier's Team City Bikes.' I stopped Kent and told him to hang back until noon, that we had 2nd place sewn up, but he was on FIRE and quickly stoked me into riding our 13th lap, which I did as hard as I could, sprinting into the finish line in the big ring (as I did all of my laps).

We all had a great time battling it out with our good buddies and camp-mates. We got to talk a lot of trash, strategize... It was a lot of fun. Third place was about 30-40min back so we didn't have to even go out for that last lap, and let me tell you, I didn't want to. Of course, I was glad that I did.

This is the best I've felt on a bike in years. Not since pre-marriage/fatherhood have I been this strong. I'm still behind my peak speed/power, but it's amazing that I've been able to power up this year. I'm not getting any younger, for sure. This year is my 32nd birthday so I'm pretty happy with where I am. Putting in 5 8.5m laps, all within a few minutes of each other is pretty rad.

Big shout-out to Team BikeWorks for putting on a great, friendly race. And thanks to everybody down there for keeping the land open and the trails tight. That course is the great equalizer. There's really nowhere to open it up, you just have to stay on the gas the whole time. Transitions are key. You have to power out of the turns (they are tight) and keep your speed up whenever the trail points down. The bridges are great but they make some people nervous. If you've never done it, you should. It's fun and challenging.

Dt, Kent (fruitcake) and Evan made the pics. Volunteers and a blurry shot of the start also included.

I'll go through the few photos that I have and get some more posted up here. I need to get Larry's picture up. Camp and I first raced against each other here about 6-7 years ago. We both raced solo (me single, him geared) and we had an 'I'm passing' conversation during the night that we both remember. He hasn't raced here since then but we managed to be out there again this year. Larry is a great guy, fast as Hell, and, I'm not afraid to say, a damn good-looking man! Way to go Larry! (Call me).

See you all soon. I'm hoping to hit the Massanutten DH race this weekend for a little change of pace. We'll see how it goes.