Tag team at Hot Aug nights, 2008

Big Ring racers showed up ready to rock!

Rick and I decided to tag team, Tobin’s first tag and Rick’s 3rd (with Matt Spak).
All started with Rick winning the honour of first lap over a loonie flip. On his way to the start, he breaks his chain. Fixed in time and makes his way to the middle to the pack.

After some laps and the race well under way, we are told we are in 5th place. We keep pushing and riding hard, we slowly make our way just into second place. Then, Tobin takes off and breaks his bike frame in half! Being 2 KM from camp and 3 KM from the Start/Finish, he decides to run back to camp. Cutting thru the bush, hopping from trail to trail and landing right by the main first aid tent, he ran hard back to camp. Rick was great, no complaining, no worries, he just put his helmet on and back on the course he was, at least he got a 25 min break, just enough time to eat and get his bike ready to go.

Gilles, God bless Papa G.

He offered his spare bike, a full S carbon FSR Giant (for sale). The bike was so happy to be ridden hard once again, poor thing, now a spare bike wasting away. Tobin switched his seat and seat post, hand grips and pedals, adjusting it as best he could since he did have plenty of riding to do on it. Minutes before Rick was coming back in, Tobin decides to ride around a little, just to get used to the bike. He could not figure out the shifting since the right shifter was broken! Like a great team, 4 to 6 guys started stripping Tobin’s broken bike’s shifter off while others removed the broken one. Within minutes, the new shifter was on. But Rick was to fast, we simply flagged him thru and said Tobin would be at the finish line to take over again, we hope. All worked out for the best, this gave us just enough time for Scott to finish the final adjustments.

Now we where in 5th place again and had a battle thru the night to deal with. We rode steady all night long, not missing a shift and keeping things smooth.
By daybreak, we where in first place and we had no intensions of letting this position be taken away from us. All morning we extended our lead and finished with 24 laps in 24 hours. Teams 2 to 4 finished with 23 laps, so a very competitive race.

Tobin is so proud of our duo and impressed once again on how Rick just kept his head on straight and rode hard all the way, never panicked and always wanted to crush our competition.

Once thing is for sure, never take Rick’s line.
Don’t force him off his line!
Don’t slow down his line.
Don’t mess with his line!
Don’t cut off his line!
Don’t even think of doing anything to his line!
Don’t even talk about his line!

Thanks to all our friends and the Big Ring racing team.
Special thanks to Gilles, without your great spare bike, this would not have been possible, thanks for your generosity.
Does this make the bike be worth more of less?
And a huge thanks to our support team! Would not have been the same without you, we hope to have made you proud.
And of course thanks to our Sponsors. I love those Kenda Small Block Eights!

A great racing even as always.

As mentioned here, Tanya #1 solo women, amazing, so calm and steady! The most low maintenance racer I’ve ever seen!

Gilles, Stef, Kari, Mark and Leslie, another podium, 2nd. Making it look to easy!

New to these races, an old friend from Adventure Racing, Tanya Martin and her man Ray placed 3rd, minutes behind second at their first try as co-ed tag team. Not easy! Great job! Again, fun to be with all the way.

And Matt Spak, placing #1 on his team, crazy fast laps all the way! Congrats!
And Matt, as for “having your tag team-mate back”, don’t forget, he was mine first!

Cheers!