XC8, Buffalo Pound, Saskatchewan

Solo Women:
1. Trish "I mean business out there" Grajczyk defending on her home turf.
2. Tori "Hi, I'm an endurance mountain biker now" aka. The Bee.
3. A Winnipegger.

Also of note, a prize went to Tori in recognition of the bee outfit.

Solo Men:
1. Papa goat Pat "show no mercy" Doyle... laid the smack down on a leg busting climb at the 7 hour 15 minute mark, only to be glimpsed one more time in the distance by the chasers. I think Pat would even win with no gears. Or running. Or even crawling, just cause that's the kind of tough as nails shit he's made of.
2. Craig "I'm back" Stappler - nice enough to wait for a Bakke wipeout on the start of lap 13 (ever notice your handling starts to decline at the 7:45 mark?), then sprints to the finish for 2nd and takes it by 1/2 a second to...
3. BikingBakke who hangs on for third. Surprise of the day was that some mope who cut me off on the first climb took the hilltop prem of two mins I thought I'd pocketed - guess there wasn't a seperate one for singlespeeders.

Gerry and Linda overcame some adversity for 6th (Gerry started the day off by breaking his chain on lap 1 - too much power)... and had a second break later in the day.

We put in 13 laps (Trish 10, Tori 8), and finished in about 8 hours 20 minutes. Which was 114k of riding and 3,517m (11,500 feet) of climbing on my computer. I can tell you my right lat was cramping on the last two laps from so much high torque climbing and gripping the handlebars. If I heard right, the first place team did 10 laps, and 4th place solo did 11 laps.

The course was FANTASTIC. Funnest trail I've ridden all year, it never got old. Fast and flowy, technical came from high speed turns and fun rather than being a bone jarring course. Weather was great, a little sprinkle at 4pm but that's all. The three solo deadgoats put in lap after lap together, and I think we surprised the field in that Craig and I rode the whole 8 hours together in paceline form.

Deadgoats also cleaned up on draw prizes... I almost missed a Marzocchi Corsa SL World Cup fork cause I was busy drinking champagne from Trish's trophy, but clued in just in time. Sweet!

Ps. Maybe a category for first non-deadgoat next year is in order??