We headed down Friday night and stayed at a hotel since it is almost a 5 hour drive and that wouldn't have been fun race day morning. Got to the park with plenty of time to spare, so we walked a couple of the trails just to get an idea of what the terrain was like, we got about 1/2 mile into the woods, and it was some nice singletrack, well packed, smooth and flat. Perfect recipe for some fast racing. I go and start getting warmed up and find a neat place for some picture taking, so I tell Ang and the kids where to head to, and I went and headed for the starting line. The start was a bit sketchy as they had us about 1/4 mile up a paved road and shoot right into the singletrack, but going from the pavement to the grass was a few 4x4 pieces of wood sticking out of the ground, basically so you can't drive on the grass, and we had to go in between 3 of them to get on the trail, thankfully no one hit one. Get into the woods in second place, and I have a guy come around me at one section where it opened up a bit, ok I am sitting in 3rd, no biggie. We hit the short little hill and the guy in 1st place breaks his chain, ouch 1/2 mile in and you are done, so that puts me into second now and I am with one of the local guys. I am a better technical rider than he is, so I was able to keep on his wheel in all the log crossing sections and tight stuff, but when it opened up he was gone, so basically a game out cat and mouse so to speak. We come around at the end of lap one, and I am n second a few seconds behind him.
2nd lap, I am still right behind him, and catching him where I am doing better than hm, and for a little bit I was in front of him, but he would get me on the fast open stuff, we get about 3/4 of the way through that lap, and there is a course marshal saying there is a guy hurt, and they are stopping the race, and will restart, so find a way back to the start, so we get a group of us and head back up to the levee and make our way to the parking lot. By this time the guy is out of the woods and into the ambulance, and they are trying to figure out how to restart the race. They decided to take your placing from the first lap, and set us off in that order, giving the appropriate time gaps to make it fair, so after sitting around for 20 minutes or so, and having to go again, my legs weren't to happy about that, and I couldn't quite make it back up to the guy in front of me.
3rd and final lap, I can see him in a few spots, but can never bridge the gap to him, and now I can see guys behind me, so no looking back, just need to go for it. I was clearing all the log crossings well, and trying to push to hard in some spots that might have cost me some seconds due to having to slow down into the corners more since I was going faster into them. I get to the end of the lap, maybe a mile to go, and can hear people coming maybe one section behind me, and now adrenaline has taken over completely at that point, and I just hammer to the line.
Came across in 2nd Place for the Sport Open which got me a medal, and also secured my position as winner of the IMBCS Points Series for the Sport Open. Not sure when they do the awards for that, but I will update when they do. We got some decent pictures, and they will be up soon...
 |
| IMBCS #3 |
No comments:
Post a Comment