Thursday afternoon, I received the OK from the SC Velo race director, Omar Almaguer stating that Joe and I could race. They were kind enough to allow us to race, but since they didn’t have a category for us, we’ve been granted access to race in the Beginner Men 27-34. As grateful as Joe and I are for the opportunity to race, we’re pretty nervous about it. Mt. Sac (venue) has some big gnarly climbs that are crazy tough.
But out of all the nervousness we’re feeling, we’re super excited about the race. Personally, I haven’t raced an XC event in 3 years! Oh and get this, I’m the Captain of the tandem! So that means there’s some added pressure in making sure we don’t crash and safely maneuver through the trails. One more thing I need to address, we’re riding with clipless pedals. When we practiced the other night, we found that our feet kept slipping off the flat pedals and felt we needed more control over the bike.
We’ve dubbed our tandem the “Soul Searcher.” Why? For one, it really wasn’t meant to be an off-road bicycle, let alone a race tandem. So with the suspension fork, bigger tires and road gearing, it is more of a confused tandem than anything, thus the name was appropriate.
With that being said, we look forward in racing the Fat Tire Classic and we hope to make it back home in one piece. We’ll make sure we post a race report chock full of photos and hopefully videos.
It was great to see you guys out there on that thing! Great idea, and strong work for convincing them to let you race. –Eric @ IEMTB