WORST 50 MILES EVER.

Or maybe the "toughest" 50 miles ever, or the "roughest", but either way it was miserable. Things for my "El Paso Puzzler" experience started out bad when I spent the week before laying around the house being sick and a general wreck. I knew things had taken another turn for the worse when at the starting line for this 50 mile race ( that's 80km for the rest of the world) I noticed that I had put on one of my socks inside out! If you can't dress yourself properly there's no way you can race successfully, that's just how the world works.
The start when of with a bang and within 1 minute my chain popped of and I had to serve to the side nearly being trampled by 100 other crazed racers. I got my chain situation taken care of and I was back on my way; officially in dead last with everyone and their mother in front of me.
For the next 5 hours and 37 minutes I rode the most miserable terrain I've ever done in my life, if you weren't riding through deep sand you were struggling through loose fist sized rocks, if it wasn't that then it was baby sized rocks or small child sized rocks. Most technical riding I've ever done, at one point I took my eyes off the trail to look ahead and I was promptly flipped over my handlebars. To make matters worse the trail was lined with plants that might as well have been razor blades, by the end of the race everyone was sliced and diced pretty well! And to top that I was coughing like a maniac the whole race with boogers dripping all over my face, to add embarrassment I accidentally peed in my shorts a little bit with 10 miles to the finish! In the end I finished 3rd in the single speed category, so it wasn't all for waste.
I'm never doing the "Puzzler" again!



This is what everyone's body looked like in the end.
I won a rock.......um.... "YAAAAA!!"