What a great team name, huh? Yep. That’s the name we chose. Well, some of us on the team may have forced it on others. At least at the end of the series, Neal Boyd himself even asked where the hell did we come up with a name like that. Sorry folks, but it’s going to remain a secret. If I tell you, I’d have to pull you out back and beat you with a sock full of potatoes. Ever seen what a sock full of potatoes will do to a person? It’s not pretty.
Anyhow, a couple of us monkeys started this all by thinking about doing the Winter Short Track Series. For the unfamiliar, it’s basically, a loop of about a mile in length consisting of a mix of single track trail, gravel road and a little bit of parking lot. Depending on your class, you may be racing for 30 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour. The goal is to go as fast and hard as you can on your mountain bike to get as many laps as you can in that given time period. Of course, you get your own personal bonus points by not throwing up in the process. Not including throw up points, you accrue points at each race in an attempt to win some goodies at the end of doing this for 5 Sundays in a row.
Anyhow, me, Jim and Margo were the original clowns thinking of doing the series. I reached out to Caleb to see if he wanted to and after some himming and hawing, I think we finally talked him into it. As we dug into the details, we discovered that there was a team competition which set us on a course of scheming. This meant that we could not only accrue points individually, but that we could also accrue points as a team and have a little more fun in the process. At first, we thought of joining an existing team, but in the end we decided to pull together our own little band of misfits. When it was all said and done, we ended up with this good looking bunch (except for that ugly one on his knees):
From Left to Right: Danny Pagan, Margo Pitts, Steven Pugh, Some Dork, Jen Barthel, Jim Dandro and Caleb Baity.
We all had a blast racing the series, hanging out, cheering each other and even wallering in misery at times. Heck, we even looked pretty good doing it.
Check out more pics on the Rabid Muffin Monkeys Facebook page.
And then there was that really cold race that I think took most of us 3 days to thaw out from. Warmup went from the normal riding of your mountain bike in the parking lot to this:
Yep, dem are jeans right der.
All-in-all, it was a great time racing and in the end, we all worked together, raced our asses off and our team finished the series in Second Place.
Thanks Neal Boyd. You and your Start2Finish team put on an outstanding event as always!
I’d honestly have to say that I am a little bummed that we’re not all racing together again this weekend. Miss you guys and gals!
-Be a Warrior!
Marcus
Speedy Lizard 