Friday, September 18, 2009

Blue Mountain- H2H race #5 recap

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, IT WAS AWESOME!!! Can you tell I haven't raced XC
since breaking my collarbone this spring? Blue Mountain continues to
be the best of the H2H series with WMBA doing a stellar job organizing
the race, building the trails and maintaining them! Conditions were
amazing- light rain the day before left it dust-free, temps weren't
the typical 50degrees we've had in past years either! The competition
was tough as my 35-39 age group had the fastest Cat2 lap times of 1hr
26min, my time was 13 minutes off the leader-YEAH BABY! The new course
layout was killer even though lots of racers complained about bad
trail marking, I call it "creative navigation" especially on lap 2
when I was delirious, dehydrated and alone… A short recap- I felt
great right from the start, I rolled into the singletrack in prolly
10th place after the long straightaway sprint. A dude on a steel Surly
passed me a few miles in and at first pissed me off because I assumed
that being on a Surly he was singlespeed and full rigid which turned
out he wasn't either one, my ego is still OK as I race full suspension
geared wuss bike! Trying to pass him I notice he was picking some
killer lines thru the rockgardens and had a really fast flow... so I
rolled in behind him and started taking notes! I finally decided to
pass him before the end of lap1 and use what I remembered of his lines
for lap2! I had an over the bars moment just into the second lap
landing feet first! I made another stoopid move with my new lockout
fork which I had in no-squish mode so's I could open up a gap on the
dude following me. I came up on some rocks after a blind corner and
lost all tire contact with the dirt, again didn't land too hard! My
chaser didn't catch me as I recovered quickly but Mr fork lock-out was
used more sparingly after that move! I was able to hammer all the way
to the finish with only some minor cramping and some minor "being
passed" as some dude I was sure was an expert on a blazing fast
preride blew by about 2 miles from the finish! I felt my finish was
definitely in the top 10 or better. Very happy to see 6th place!


photo: BIKEZILLA


H2H#7 Jungle Habitat is in 2 weeks. I hope to get my 15 year old son

to the race- he loved it last time he raced there so I just have to
convince him this is better than his XBOX!

H2H#8 The Leaf Blower in Ringwood NJ is in October, that's always a
great finisher to the season...

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